Knowledge authors create troubleshooters from the Troubleshooters navigation link in the authoring portal and can quickly start creating the diagnostic questions and actions through an intuitive configuration tool. Authors manage their draft and published troubleshooters in different tabs to ensure separation of completed (published) and draft troubleshooters. While creating questions, the author will also see a list of the questions they have already added to their troubleshooter for quick visual reference. A question repository allows authors to reuse questions in multiple troubleshooters, avoiding duplication of common questions. Questions in troubleshooters can also be reordered when a new question needs to be added or other resequencing of questions is required. Authors also have a graphical view option that displays the troubleshooter in a tree format, providing a “big picture” view of the full troubleshooter tree and branches.

The rich text editor supports a wide variety of question formatting, as well as options for inserting relevant images and videos to provide a visually-engaging end user experience. Launching a Customer Service case is also supported, which allows a customer to seek additional help if they cannot self-diagnose their issue, so that customers are not stranded. The troubleshooter also supports launching other troubleshooters to create multi-branched complex diagnostics. Once a troubleshooter has been configured, the troubleshooter can be run in the Pega Customer Service interaction portal as a case, or in a web self-service portal as a Pega Web Mashup case.

A Pega Customer Service Guided Troubleshooter service case enables CSRs to help customers diagnose issues. A “Troubleshooter categories” configuration in the knowledge portal allows organizations to define the relevant Products, Problem type, Sub-problem type, and corresponding troubleshooter to launch. This provides CSRs with a simple navigation path to the appropriate troubleshooter as they work with their customers.

Troubleshooters that are abandoned by customers during a self-service interaction are automatically suggested in the Pega Customer Service Next Best Action area for immediate visibility to CSRs. CSRs can continue in the step where the customer left the troubleshooter, or they can start again. When they open the Guided Troubleshooter service case, CSRs also have visibility into what questions and answers a customer has already completed. The troubleshooter service request can also be exposed to web self-service applications using Pega Web Mashup. The key troubleshooter features are described next.