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The Craft Access System was a system developed by an AT&T subsidiary BellSouth Telecommunications Advanced Systems Division in 1984 that allowed telephone installers and repair personnel to access their work order system (e.g., LMOS) by means of various pocket-PC like devices (Craft Access Terminals) which connected to the landline telephone system. The developer, Muchiri Motilewa, designed and coded the proof-of-concept prototype on a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 computer in BASIC and a DEC VAX-11/780 Unix machine in C and Shell. The system went live as the Dispatcher Installer Networking System, DINS, with 10 installers in Birmingham, AL and 10 installers in Atlanta, GA in August of that year and was later ported to the hand-held system shown here.
The system allowed far fewer dispatchers to give trouble tickets and install assignments to technicians who were also able to send and receive text messages to dispatchers, clock-in and clock-out, report results and location information, and print paper tickets for the customer to sign on-the-spot after job completion.
Various spoofs still exist today, although they have developed considerably.