PITA - Penn State Information Technology Advisor

Table of Contents

• PITA

  • Product Description
  • Documentation
  • Use Cases
  • Getting Started
  • How to Build the System
  • How to Test the System
  • How to Run the System
  • Team Info

• Developer Guidelines

• User Manual

• Living Doc

Product Description

PITA is a chatbot for the Penn State Abington IT Student Workers to utilize when they are faced with an issue they can not solve and need additional assistance with troubleshooting for common IT issues. This chatbot will enable the IT student workers to quickly retrieve answers to help faculty and students in an efficient manner. PITA answers common IT issues and questions, looks up details in the knowledge base, and provides step by step solutions. PITA serves as a fast and personalized virtual IT assistant. The chatbot provides an intuitive conversational interface for users to get help with troubleshooting, university software, and other technical problems.

The key goals for the PITA chatbot project include:

• Create an intuitive text-based conversational interface
• Allow IT staff to easily find answers to common support questions
• Reduce IT response times and enhance user satisfaction
• Develop a robust knowledge base for the chatbot from existing documents
• Provide high-quality conversational experiences powered by AI
• Deliver a minimum viable product that adds value for the IT department
• Establish a platform that can be expanded with more capabilities over time

Documentation

• Developer Guidelines: Developer Guidelines
• User Manual: User Manual
• Living Doc: Living Doc

Use Cases

Operational Use Cases

• Resource for IT student workers when presented with questions beyond their technical knowledge
  • IT student workers can open the chatbot and ask it questions about Abington’s Information Technology Department and receive answers to better assist faculty.
• IT admins to determine if more training is necessary
  • Admin can login to view user history in order to determine if students need more training to better support staff
• Authenticating user IT admin
  • Main admin password that can be used in order to view student chatbot history

Non-Operational Use Cases

• Removing outdated data from the IT department database
  • Can do this as a developer using the form when running dapp.py
• Adding new information to the IT department database
  • Can do this as a developer using the form when running dapp.py
• IT department to keep track of common technical issues
  • Wanted to implement an analysis page with common issues

Getting Started

1. Navigate to our repository at https://github.com/Gabi-Gindoff/PITA-repository/tree/main
2. Open Codespaces by pressing the “.” key on your keyboard. When the codespaces opens, go to the three horizontal lines, select terminal, new terminal. Select “continue working in GitHub codespaces” and then select whichever instance type you want for your codespace (doesn’t matter if you choose 2 or 4 cores). You can now use the terminal to build, test, and run the program.

How to Build the System

Once you have a new terminal opened (using the steps above found in the getting started section), you can proceed to build the system. All of the following steps are to be done using this terminal.
Copy and paste the following code into the terminal:

   cd flask_db_app
   pip install poetry
   poetry install

How to Test the System

Before testing the system, ensure all the steps from the build system instruction are completed. Once the build is complete, you can proceed to testing. Copy and paste the following code into the terminal:

To test the application:

   cd flask_db_app
   poetry run pytest test_app.py

To see data in database:

  cd flask_db_app
  poetry run python dapp.py

To delete the new testing entry made by the testing command:

  cd flask_db_app
  python delete_test_from_db.py

Press the keys "Crtl + C" in the terminal to exit the application at anytime

How to Run the System

Copy and paste the following code into the terminal:

To run the system:

  cd flask_db_app
  poetry run python app.py

To access the website, click either the pop-up that appears in the bottom right or click the link directly from the terminal. Doing either of these options will open up a new tab in your browser that you can interact with. Press the keys "Crtl + C" in the terminal to exit the application at any time

Team Info

• Gabriella Gindoff: Backend Engineer
• Adam Christopher: Frontend Engineer
• Harkaren Kaur: UI Design/ Frontend Engineer
• Treasure Davis: UI Design/ Frontend Engineer
• Elizabeth Johney: Backend Engineer
• Katherine Banis: Backend Engineer