Nowadays, network operations engineers, planning engineers and technology engineers are using a plethora of collaboration tools such as Slack and/or Microsoft Teams to share and collaborate valuable information. In fact, there’s been an increase in distributed and virtual work environments in recent years partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic which has also given rise to the term ChatOps particularly in the context of network and IT operations. As a result, operation engineers need to react and effectively communicate with other team members, synchronously and asynchronously, to identify the root cause of network problems.
Traditionally, operation engineers would have to leave one collaboration tool to use other application interfaces and tools to find the information they need. Teams would have to copy this information to Slack or Teams to share with other members of the team. Seems tedious, doesn’t it?
We have seen the ability from several observability tools to post notifications in Slack or Teams like other sharing methods such as email, SMS, Jira, etc. Still, this is not the most effective and efficient method of communication for operations teams to share information quickly and seamlessly.
Selector has redefined how operations teams communicate and share information by taking ChatOps to a whole new level. By leveraging the power of natural language and Selector’s Analytics platform, any operations engineer can ask the platform (using natural language) the information needed, and receive an immediate answer rendered in the same channel. In addition, all other team members will have this information readily available. Not only does this eliminate the need for switching back and forth between applications, but multiple teams can easily request the Selector platform in their respective collaboration channels, facilitating cross-domain and cross-team collaboration.
Operations teams need to track Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) metrics for insight into network issues. Both are highly influenced by the rapid flow of information from the network to the operation engineers and the exchange of ideas and analysis among the different team members.
Let’s explore some of the benefits of Selector’s Analytics platform:
First, operations teams get the answers they need, when they need them, regardless of where they’re located. Having Selector Analytics platform integrated in a collaboration tool eliminates the barriers for information flow.
Second, by supporting natural language-based queries, the ‘information barrier’ is significantly reduced. For instance, operations engineers can easily request the information they need even if they don’t know Selector software query language (S2QL). The Selector Analytics’ platform enables an engineer to easily request the information needed and get the right answers powered by Selector’s Machine Learning (ML) based analytics. As a result, teams get the answer where they need it most, in their collaboration tool for easy and immediate access by other team members.
Below are several screenshots of this unique feature:
Interested in learning more about this feature? Contact us today for a free demo!