Managing storage operations through an administrative assistant that processes natural language

Abstract

The disclosed technology can receive a voice query or text query in a natural language and translate it from natural language to a native database management language to respond to the query. For example, a human can ask his or her computer to “show large emails from December 2016”, and a data agent on computer can receive the voice request, convert audio associated with the voice to words in natural language, convert natural language into a SQL query, and convert the SQL query into a database management query. The data agent is trained with a corpus of technical documents and rules to determine the intent or keywords for answering the query. In some implementations, the disclosed technology can also include a chatbot and/or administrative assistant to enable a human to interface with a database management software using voice or text. In some implementations, the disclosed technology allows the user to automatically connect to a help desk technician to assist in completing the query.

I/We claim: 
     
         1 . A computer-readable storage medium storing instructions that, when executed by a computing system, cause the computing system to perform operations for providing an administrative assistant, the operations comprising:
 determining a status of storage management system, wherein the status at least includes two of the following:
 i. current data storage jobs running, 
 ii. scheduled data storage jobs, 
 iii. errors that have occurred in performing data storage jobs, or 
 iv. alerts regarding potential errors that may occur with the scheduled data storage jobs; 
   providing, via a graphical user interface, the status of the storage management to a user;   providing to the user a solution or list of solutions for the errors that have occurred or potential errors that may occur;   receiving, via the graphical user interface, user instruction to execute at least one solution;   executing the solution; and   storing the instructions for use to solve future errors.   
     
     
         2 . The computer-readable storage medium of  claim 1 , wherein the operations are initiated when a user opens an administrative assistant on a mobile device or a computing device. 
     
     
         3 . The computer-readable storage medium of  claim 1 , the operations further comprising automatically connecting the user to a help desk technician upon the user's request to be connected to a help desk. 
     
     
         4 . The computer-readable storage medium of  claim 1 , further comprising connecting the user to a help desk technician upon a determination that the user instruction is missing a required parameter to execute the instruction. 
     
     
         5 . A computer-readable storage medium storing instructions that, when executed by a computing system, cause the computing system to perform operations for providing a virtual administrative assistant to communicate with a storage management system in response to a user request, the operations comprising:
 conveying by the virtual administrative assistant, a status associated with storage operations in the storage management system,   receiving a query by the virtual administrative assistant, wherein the query comprises natural language query and wherein the query comprises storage management jobs comprising one of:
 i. current data storage jobs running, 
 ii. scheduled data storage jobs, 
 iii. errors that have occurred in performing data storage jobs, or 
 iv. alerts regarding potential errors that may occur with the scheduled jobs; 
   translating the natural language query into a domain language query,   translating the domain language query to a database software query,   communicating by the virtual administrative assistant with a storage manager in the storage management system to execute a response to the user query.   
     
     
         6 . The computer-readable storage medium of  claim 5 , wherein the administrative assistant receives the query through one of: an audio request and a chatbox. 
     
     
         7 . The computer-readable storage medium of  claim 5 , wherein after the step of translating the natural language query into a domain language query, further comprising determining by the virtual administrative assistant that the query does not comprise a required parameter to respond to the query, and issuing a prompt by the virtual administrative assistant to the user for the required parameter. 
     
     
         8 . The computer-readable storage medium of  claim 5 , wherein the response is an action, a confirmation, and an answer requiring no action. 
     
     
         9 . The computer-readable storage medium of  claim 8 , wherein an action comprises at least one of: backup operation, data deduplication, reporting status of a job, providing a user with a link to a document in the storage management system, archiving, creating a virtual machine, deleting a virtual machine, taking a snapshot, moving a document or data from one location to another in the storage management system, performing disaster recovery for a failed drive in the storage management system, and performing disaster recovery for a failed media in the storage management system. 
     
     
         10 . The computer-readable storage medium of  claim 5 , further comprising providing an update by the virtual administrative assistant to the user wherein the update comprises at least a portion of the response to the query. 
     
     
         11 . A method comprising:
 conveying by a virtual administrative assistant, a status associated with storage operations in a storage management system,   receiving a query by the virtual administrative assistant from a user, wherein the query comprises natural language query and wherein the query comprises storage management jobs comprising one of:
 i. current data storage jobs running, 
 ii. scheduled data storage jobs, 
 iii. errors that have occurred in performing data storage jobs, or 
 iv. alerts regarding potential errors that may occur with the scheduled data storage jobs; 
   translating the natural language query into a domain language query,   translating the domain language query to a database software query,   communicating by the virtual administrative assistant with a storage manager in the storage management system to execute a response to the query.   
     
     
         12 . The method of  claim 11 , further comprising determining a response by the storage manager to the query, wherein the response comprises an action executing a command based on the query. 
     
     
         13 . The method of  claim 11 , further comprising determining by the virtual administrative assistant that the query is missing a parameter to execute the query, presenting to the user by the virtual administrative assistant an alternate recommendation for another query. 
     
     
         14 . The method of  claim 11 , wherein after the step of: translating the natural language query into a domain language query, further comprising determining by the virtual administrative assistant that the query does not comprise the required parameters to respond to the query, and issuing a prompt by the virtual administrative assistant to the user for the missing parameter. 
     
     
         15 . The method of  claim 11 , further comprising connecting the user to a help desk technician upon the user's request to be connected to a help desk. 
     
     
         16 . The method of  claim 11 , further comprising connecting the user to a help desk technician upon a determination that the query is missing a required parameter to execute the query. 
     
     
         17 . The method of  claim 11 , wherein the virtual administrative assistant receives the query through one of: an audio request and a chatbox. 
     
     
         18 . The method of  claim 11 , wherein the response is an action, a confirmation, and an answer requiring no action. 
     
     
         19 . The method of  claim 18 , wherein an action comprises at least one of: backup operation, data deduplication, reporting status of a job, providing a user with a link to a document in the storage management system, archiving, creating a virtual machine, deleting a virtual machine, taking a snapshot, moving a document or data from one location to another in the storage management system, performing disaster recovery for a failed drive in the storage management system, and performing disaster recovery for a failed media in the storage management system. 
     
     
         20 . The method of  claim 11 , further comprising providing an update by the virtual administrative assistant to the user wherein the update comprises at least a portion of the response to the query.