Systems and methods for accelerating user interactions on touchscreen devices
Disclosed systems and methods provide an integrated hypermedia engine (IHE) that monitors and predicts user activity on spawned document windows and spliced network management CLI/GUI sessions. In embodiments, the IHE pro-actively assists a user to efficiently use device-related documentation in an intuitive manner that requires minimal user interaction and, thereby, reduces the likelihood of human error, e.g., when configuring network devices involves multi-tiered, dynamic configuration paths. The IHE may acts as bridge between document windows and spliced network management sessions, for example, to enable seamless transfer of a CLI command from a document window to an inline GUI panel launched by a CLI session when constructing a command line. In embodiments, a context-ware THE may create and take advantage of documentation tags by interpreting relationships between commands to enable auto-navigation of the document. Certain embodiments provide for monitoring and mapping a CLI/GUI output back to the appropriate documentation.
1. A method for improving interfacing with a configurable device, the method comprising:
launching a document viewer to spawn a document viewer window that displays a document;
launching a spliced network management (SNM) session to spawn an SNM session window to establish a connection to a network device;
in response to a user selecting one or more items in the document viewer window and the user selecting one or more items in the SNM session window, associating the document with the spliced SNM session and learning a current configuration state from the network device;
in the document, identifying commands for modifying a configuration state of the network device; and
injecting a user-selected command into the SNM session window to modify the configuration state of the network device.
2. The method according to claim 1 , wherein identifying the commands in the document further comprises selecting from a database of commands a list of commands that is compatible with the network device.
3. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the user-selected command is a parameterized command that is injected into the network device via a command line of the spliced SNM session.
4. The method according to claim 3 , wherein the user-selected command has been modified prior to being injected into the command line.
5. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the spliced SNM session communicates an output from the network device to the SNM session window.
6. The method according to claim 5 , further comprising receiving and parsing the output to obtain the configuration state of the network device.
7. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising controlling the document viewer and the spliced SNM session by an integrated hypermedia engine that monitors and manages interactions between at least the document viewer window and the SNM session window to enable auto-navigation within the document.
8. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising, based on a feature dependence tree, grouping command sequences as features to maintain dependencies within the document.
9. An integrated hypermedia engine (IHE) comprising:
one or more processors configured to cause a parser to parse a document to identify commands for modifying a configuration state of a network device, the one or more processors further configured to cause a spliced network management (SNM) session to launch, the IHE monitors and manages interactions between a user, a document window, and a SNM window to enable auto-navigation within the document, the IHE configured to perform steps comprising:
in response to user selections of one or more items in the document window and one or more items in the spliced SNM session, learning a current configuration state from the network device, and associating a document displayed in the document window with the spliced SNM session, based on a type of the document; and
injecting the command into the SNM window to modify the configuration state of the network device.
10. The IHE according to claim 9 , wherein the parser provides user-selectable parsing options to associate tags with SNM commands based on a set of command categories.
11. The IHE according to claim 9 , wherein the spliced SNM session is launched by a session handler that accesses a parameterized command in a command buffer and presents in the SNM window options using an inline GUI panel.
12. The IHE according to claim 11 , wherein the SNM window is presented with an input parameter for the parameterized command, the input parameter having been selected by the user via the inline GUI panel, and with a placeholder that when selected initiates a new SNM session.
13. The IHE according to claim 11 , wherein the session handler is launched as a child application in response to the user starting an ICLI application.
14. A system to accelerate command line interface interactions, the system comprising:
an integrated hypermedia engine (IHE) comprising:
a processor;
a document handler; and
a session handler; and
a network device coupled to the IHE, the document handler and the session handler respectively launch a document viewer and a spliced network management (SNM) session, the document handler being used to identify commands for modifying a configuration state of the network device in the document viewer, the IHE configured to perform steps comprising:
in response to a user-selection of one or more items in the document viewer and one or more items in the spliced SNM session, associating a document displayed in a document window and the user selecting one or more items in the spliced SNM session based on a type of the document and learning a current configuration state from the network device;
verifying that the document may be mapped to the network device;
injecting a command from the document viewer into an SNM window and executing the command to modify the current configuration state of the network device; and
instructing the document handler to auto-navigate to another SNM command.
15. The system according to claim 14 , wherein the spliced SNM session communicates commands to the network device and communicates an output from the network device to the SNM window.
16. The system according to claim 15 , wherein the session handler further comprises a device parser that monitors a sequence of commands issued by a user and receives and parses the output and renders a modified configuration state to the SNM window.
17. The system according to claim 16 , wherein the device parser groups the sequence of commands as a feature to maintain dependencies within the document based on a feature dependence tree.
18. The system according to claim 17 , wherein the IHE detects a current feature being configured in the SNM window based on the sequence of commands and causes the document viewer to auto-navigate through the document to guide the user through subsequent feature configurations steps.
19. The system according to claim 16 , further comprising an IHE-controlled console area that displays interactions between the user, the document, and the spliced SNM session.
20. The system according to claim 19 , wherein one or more of the interactions involve at least one of a voice recognition interface and a gesture-based input.