December 7, 2009
Kevin has started his first in a series of posts around customizing Dovetail Carrier. Good stuff! I’m looking forward to the rest of his series.
September 21, 2009
I recently received a request asking how to migrate some data (specifically, cases) from Clarify into Zendesk. Seems the company is in the process of turning off Clarify and rolling out Zendesk. It’s all about the APIs We provide a full set of APIs for Clarify within our Dovetail SDK, and Zendesk also provides a set of APIs. So we just need to put them together. PowerShell I’ve been using PowerShell more and more lately, so I decided to use that as my environment. And because Powershell gives me full access to the .NET framework, I can use classes such as System.Net.WebClient, which makes it easy for me to call the Zendesk REST APIs. Login to Clarify In a previous post, I showed how to use some common functions in PowerShell for logging into a Clarify database. . .\DovetailCommonFunctions.ps1 $ClarifyApplication = create-clarify-application;…
May 27, 2009
Dovetail Mobile has quickly become one of my favorite products. Although it was originally designed for use on Mobile devices, it seems that I'm constantly coming up with new ways to use it. On a Mobile Device In its original intended state: on a mobile device. On the Desktop As I've shown before, a little bit of styling makes it pleasant to use on the desktop. Within a Google Gadget From a previous post: Clarify / Amdocs / Dovetail access from a Google Gadget Within Outlook You can easily add a folder in outlook that points to a URL. That makes it easy to incorporate Dovetail Mobile within Outlook. This is easy to setup. Create a folder in Outlook, right-click on the folder, choose Properties. Check the box that says "Show home page by default",…
April 6, 2009
Notifications and escalations generated by Rulemanager are an integral component of the Clarify/Dovetail system. Traditionally, email and in-application notifications are the most common notification delivery mechanisms. Digital pagers were popular years ago, but are pretty much non-existent today. With mobile devices (iPhones, Windows Mobile, BlackBerrys, etc.) becoming almost ubiquitous, we can look to using these devices for notification delivery. And they all share a common communication platform - SMS. SMS (Short Message Service) is commonly referred to as text messaging. So let's look at how we can use SMS as a delivery mechanism. A while back, I detailed how to use Twitter as a notification channel, and then use Twitter to send SMS messages. If we don't want to be coupled to a service like Twitter (which doesn't have guaranteed delivery, SLAs, etc.), we can use a very similar process, but instead…
November 18, 2008
Ever since we introduced Dovetail Seeker this summer, I was anxious to incorporate its capabilities with our applications. It is integrated within Dovetail Agent, Dovetail SelfService, and Dovetail Mobile Agent. Kevin also demonstrated how to incorporate it into your own applications (his particular example was integrating Seeker with an ASP.NET 2.0 web application). We've now integrated Seeker with the Clarify Classic Client, bringing the simple and ubiquitous search box into Clarify. Dovetail Search provides the User Interface (UI) for searching and displaying retrieved search results. Dovetail Search for Clarify makes a request to Seeker, and Seeker returns a set of search results. Dovetail Search displays these results in a simple, intuitive format. What can you search?You can search any data in your Clarify database. Out of the box, Dovetail Search is configured for searching cases, solutions, change requests (bugs), subcases, and part request details. Its easily configurable, so…
September 29, 2008
One of the things I've wanted to do for a long time is have the ability to add comments on objects within the Clarify/Dovetail system. As a specific example, I've wanted to be able to add comments to a solution. For those not versed in Clarify/Dovetail speak, a Solution is essentially a KnowledgeBase (KB) article. By allowing comments, I (and others) can (hopefully) enhance the information that is within the Solution. For example, consider a KB article that is available on the web, such as a Microsoft KB article, or a Dovetail KB article. Now, lets say that I use the information in that article, but I run into a bit of a snag, discover another tip or workaround, or perhaps I've even found something wrong in that article. What can I do? I'd like to be able to leave…
March 7, 2008
We recently moved into new offices here at Dovetail, and with our new offices came a new phone system.One of the features of the phone system is that we can get an email whenever we get a voicemail. The email contains a WAV file of the actual voicemail recording. This allows us to easily be notified of, and receive voicemails, even when we're out of the office.The same rule applies to voicemails left on our support mailbox. So, if one of our customers calls our support line and leaves a voicemail message, we can get an email alerting us, along with the WAV file of the message.This is all well and good.But many of us are not on email all the time, and we have other notifications setup using Rulemanager, such as notifications to our mobile devices, and notifications via…
February 13, 2008
Kevin Miller recently had a recent post talking about how we have notifications from our Clarify/Dovetail system show up in Campfire. When a case is dispatched to our support queue, we get a notification in Campfire. That tends to be where we all "hang out", so its a perfect place for group notifications. Kevin had another great idea today that we should also post a message when the case is accepted by someone, so that we know someone has picked it up and is working it. A quick business rule: Object Type: Case Rule Name/Description: Campfire notification upon case accept Start Event: Accept Cancel Events: Conditions: [Current Owner Workgroup] = Support Action Title: Notify Campfire Action Type: Command Line Start Action: 0 minutes From: Event Creation Using: Elapsed Time Repeat: Never Message: c:\ruby\bin\ruby.exe C:\repo\DovetailAutomation\focus\campfire\classic-campfire.rb " [Object Type] [Object ID] has been accepted by [Logger]. : http://www.dovetailsoftware.com/fcclient/console/console.asp?command=casebyid¶m1=[Object ID] "…
June 8, 2007
How does the future look for the owner of the Amdocs Clarify CRM system? When Amdocs acquired Clarify, it led the way in combining its specialization in billing with CRM. This was an exciting story for the industry as a whole, sparking more acquisitions, and fueling general interest in the broader integration of departments. The story since then has been a mixed one for Amdocs customers, although the surge in CRM has led to some new integration possibilities. The upgrade path for the once-pioneering Clarify system under Amdocs has had a tortuous history, with no progression outside of the proprietary Clarify codebase, and with Amdocs moving awkwardly into thin-client experimentation. Lately the company has been developing open frameworks. Even within the main Amdocs constituency of telecommunications, some Clarify owners have looked outside of Amdocs for help, notably with the Dovetail Software enhancements. Amdocs remains…
May 15, 2007
Knowledge only works when it’s in motion – being consumed, or expressed, or else being analyzed, sorted and ordered. The data components of knowledge arise out of motion, and are captured by information systems. The greatest technical challenge for the development of enterprise-wide knowledge management lies with integration of legacy systems and newer information tools. Key tools in this effort are ETL products. ETL (extract, transform and load) refers to the extraction of data from active systems, classically for importation into a data warehouse for cleansing and (re)processing, but generally for any reason, such as a mashup or entry into another application for further recalculation on the fly. “the reality of BI for most enterprises is far murkier, with massive investments in technology for data warehousing, data integration, and analytics, but payoffs that are sparse or hard to calculate. What’s needed, experts agree,…
