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Author: Gary Sherman

Chief Technology Officer, Vice President of Products

Gary Sherman
Gary Sherman
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More fun with Powershell

September 11, 2009 I was recently working on porting some existing ClearBasic batch (cbbatch) scripts to PowerShell. I’ve blogged in the past about using our SDK with Powershell. For this particular project, I had multiple scripts to port, and I was looking to extract some common functions and utilities, so that they could be used between multiple scripts. Configuration When using the Dovetail SDK, one of the first tasks is to load up the configuration information and connect to the database. That would normally look something like: $connectionString = “Data Source=localhost;Initial Catalog=dovetail;uid=user;pwd=pass" $databaseType = “MSSQL”;     [system.reflection.assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("fcsdk") > $null; [system.reflection.assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("FChoice.Toolkits.Clarify") > $null; $config = new-object -typename System.Collections.Specialized.NameValueCollection; $config.Add("fchoice.connectionstring",$connectionString); $config.Add("fchoice.dbtype",$databaseType); $config.Add("fchoice.disableloginfromfcapp", "false"); $config.Add("fchoice.nocachefile", "true"); #Create and initialize the clarifyApplication object $ClarifyApplication = [Fchoice.Foundation.Clarify.ClarifyApplication]; if ($ClarifyApplication::IsInitialized -eq $false ){    $ClarifyApplication::initialize($config) > $null; } Code for re-use I didn’t want to repeat that in multiple scripts,…

Displaying text using a fixed width font in the Clarify Client

September 2, 2009   We received a request recently about how to deal with some text in the system that was formatted using a fixed width font.   For example, a customer might send in an email that contained some text that was laid out in a nicely formatted table structure. Such as this:   5.17637 |-----+-----+--------------+----------+--+-------+----------+-----+-----| | | JD00| firma ip | gumpendor| 1| Wien | Empfänger| fa. | 05.0| | | 0010| österreich | ferstr. | 0| | verzogen | nich| 8.20| | 5239| 4300| gmbh - | 19-21 | 6| | | t | 09| | 1478| 0140| | | 0| | | mehr| | | | 6959| | | | | | da!!| | | | 22 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |-----+-----+--------------+----------+--+-------+----------+-----+-----|     But,…

I love jQuery like this:

I love jQuery like this: $(".question").click(function(){ $(this).next(".answer").toggle(); }); When you click on a question, show the next answer. When you click on the question again, hide the answer. And my markup stays clean: <p class="question">Does this cost anything?</p> <p class="answer">No, bodybuggTweet is absolutely free.</p> That pleases me.

Hiding Empty Queues in Dovetail Agent

August 3, 2009 I was recently at a customer site, and while sitting down with one of their agents, noticed that this agent belonged to over 100 queues. Because of this, the left column of the console within DovetailAgent, which shows all of the queues, had a scrollbar that seemed to scroll forever. One of the features I like about Dovetail Mobile is that it only shows the queues that have stuff in them. I immediately said: why don't we do a similar thing within DovetailAgent? And because we have more screen real estate to work with on a desktop (as opposed to the limited screen real estate on a mobile device), I thought about allowing the empty queues to be toggled on and off. Easy enough to do. Here's what I ended up with. (I'm showing the end result with pictures first,…

Manually removing a view from the Clarify schema

July 31, 2009 I had one of the views in my database end up in a really bad state recently, so I had to manually drop the view. This is mostly a post so I have it as a reference should I need to do this again in the future. Google search FTW. SQL statements to manually remove a view (on MSSQL) Here I'm removing table_fc_user_case_view with id of 4650 delete FROM adp_view_field_info  WHERE view_type_id = 4650 delete  FROM adp_sch_info  WHERE type_id = 4650 delete  FROM adp_view_join_info  WHERE view_type_id = 4650 delete  FROM adp_tbl_name_map WHERE type_id = 4650 drop view table_fc_user_case_view

Clarify interview questions

July 1, 2009 There was a recent discussion in the Clarify CRM Professionals group in LinkedIn regarding the GeekInterview Clarify CRM Interview questions. (and no, I didn't have anything to do with these questions) Take a look - what do you think? Are these good questions? Are the answers accurate? Are they the kind of questions you would ask if you were at Amdocs and hiring an employee? Are they the kind of questions you would ask if you were hiring an Amdocs/Clarify consultant to work on your project? What questions would you ask? I posted my comments in the Clarify CRM Professionals group in LinkedIn - but my short answer is I think these questions are terrible. What say you, dear readers?

Dovetail Developer Training, August 10-14

June 24, 2009 Our next Dovetail Developer Workshop is scheduled for August 10 through August 14 here in Austin, TX for developers interested in learning how to configure, manage and customize a Dovetail CRM environment. Space is limited, so please register ASAP by simply sending Nathan Shilling an email, or calling (512) 610-5455. The workshop will kick off with a review of the Dovetail CRM components and the base-line architecture. Later sessions will walk participants through the installation of each of the Dovetail CRM modules, with hands-on programming labs where students will acquire skills and develop expertise to build new functionality, which they then can utilize to extend and customize their own CRM environment. For instance, you will: Learn how to extend your schema using SchemaEditor; Import data using ArchiveManager; Perform data access operations using the Dovetail SDK; Learn how to use Dovetail…

Creating Bug-Free software

June 4, 2009 I've heard some rumblings of late about software companies claiming that they have bug-free software, while behind the scenes they are simply closing bugs that have been opened without actually fixing them. Well, this is certainly a much easier way to create bug-free software that actually having disciplined engineering practices. We can do this pretty easy by simply creating a business rule that calls a script. The business rule Object Type: Change Request Rule Name: Bug Free Rule Set: Best Practices Start Event: Create Conditions: None Action Title: Go bug free Message Type: Command Line Start Action: 0 minutes From: Event Creation Using: Elapsed Time Command Line: C:WINDOWSsystem32WINDOW~1v1.0powershell.exe C:workPowerShellScriptsGoBugFree.ps1 "[Object ID]"   The Script GoBugFree.ps1: $IdNumber = [string] $args[0]; $ClarifyApplication = [Fchoice.Foundation.Clarify.ClarifyApplication] $ClarifySession = $ClarifyApplication::Instance.CreateSession() $qualityToolkit= new-object FChoice.Toolkits.Clarify.Quality.QualityToolkit( $ClarifySession ) $bugSetup = new-object FChoice.Toolkits.Clarify.Quality.CloseCRSetup($IdNumber) $bugSetup.Status = "Will Not Fix" $bugSetup…

A plethora of uses for Dovetail Mobile

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",…