Author: Gary Sherman

Chief Technology Officer, Vice President of Products

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Posts by Gary Sherman:

Site Part functionality in Dovetail Agent

June 2, 2015 Dovetail Agent includes functionality for maintaining your Site Parts (sometimes referred to as Installed Parts). Site Parts are parts that have actually been installed at a site. Users can install, de-install, re-install, and edit site parts. View Site Parts for a site On the site page, there is a Site Parts tab that shows all of the site parts that are installed at this site. Notice that site parts are shown hierarchically , as site parts can be installed under site parts. Also notice that the hierarchy shows Bins, which are containers for parts and for other bins. Bins are useful for organizing parts at a site. View De-installed site parts Clicking the Show De-Installed Parts checkbox will also show the parts that have been de-installed. This allows you to re-install a de-installed part. View a Site Part Clicking on…

Session Timeouts in Dovetail Agent

May 28, 2015 One of the features of Dovetail Agent is auto-refresh. For example, we automatically refresh certain things on the page, such as the number of items in a queue, and user notifications. So if an item gets dispatched to a queue, the application would show this to the user without the user having to do a manual page refresh. And similar to the Clarify Client, Dovetail Agent is typically licensed on a concurrent user basis. Previously, the automatic refresh would keep the user’s session alive, preventing the session from ever timing out. Which means that if a user left for the day without logging out, his session would stay alive (due to the auto-refresh feature), which means a concurrent user license would be consumed, which could prevent another user from logging in. Frustrating for those 2nd or 3rd shift agents. An…

Log Email enhancements in Dovetail Agent 5.11

May 26, 2015 We’ve made some improvements to the Log Email functionality in Dovetail Agent 5.11. Here’s a quick rundown of the improvements Contact Picker Previously, you had to type in an email address to the TO or CC list. Which works. But we can do better. Now, you can still type in, but we also allow you to easily search for and pick an existing contact. You can search for a contact by first name, last name, email address, site name, or any combination of these. It shows the contact’s primary address, as well as any additional email addresses that the contact may have. And of course, you can still type in any email address that you want. In action: In case the embedded video doesn't show, here's the link to the video. Form Improvements We’ve improved the layout…

Goodbye ClarifyToolbox

April 27, 2015 A few years ago, I created ClarifyToolbox.com, which was a a repository of apps, code snippets, add-ons, and APIs for the Clarify environment. It was a little experiment of my own making to try and share some resources with the community, and also a chance for me to play with Drupal. It just didn’t get the traffic or interest anticipated, and it was costing me money out of my own pocket every month, so it’s now shut down. I still own the domain. If someone in the community is interested in it, let me know.

Using task sets beyond task manager

April 22, 2015 Task Manager Task Manager is an optional Clarify module that allows subcases and action items to be automatically created when a task set is selected from a case. Task Manager and the Clarify Classic Client Within the Clarify Classic Client, this process is started by clicking the Jobs button on a case, and then selecting a Task Set to be executed. The Clarify Client then evaluates the task set and creates the subcases and action items as needed. Task Manager and Dovetail Agent Within Dovetail Agent, this process is started by choosing the Workflow - Run Task Set menu item on a case, and then selecting a Task Set to be executed. User's must have the Task Manager privilege in order to see this menu item. Dovetail Agent itself does not evaluate the task set and create subcases. Instead, Dovetail…

Here’s what you need to do…

April 1, 2015 Given that I’ve been working in customer service in some way shape or form for almost all of my career, I tend to be overly sensitive to customer experiences that aren’t great. I recently had an interaction with a support rep that irked me a bit. Email in a problem and a support case was created. Followed up the next day with an email with an additional screenshot and description with what was thought to be a related issue. The support rep responded, requesting that a new case be created instead. Basically: here’s what you need to do, so that I can have my work organized the way I want it. The support rep had all the info – if they wanted to create a second case out of the additional info, they very well could have created it themselves.…

Unit Testing a JavaScript app

March 30, 2015 Our Dovetail Agent and Dovetail SelfService products are both very JavaScript-heavy applications. And we have quite a suite of automated tests we run as part of our development process. Barrett Sonntag (one of our developers here at Dovetail) has written a nice post that details Unit Testing a JavaScript app using RequireJS with Mocha, PhantomJS, Chai & SinonJS. Unit testing is something every developer agrees should be done, but often doesn’t do. Setting it up isn’t hard after reading and evaluating what feels like a 7 course meal of modules that need to come together hand in hand to allow you to write some tests. It is fairly easy after you’ve learned more than you ever wanted to know about unit testing. Not easy at all, so I’m going to distill a stack down here for you. This is just…

Rethinking design when migrating applications

March 27, 2015 As part of helping customers move from the Clarify Classic Client to Dovetail Agent, we often assist in porting their customization from Clarify forms and ClearBasic code into Dovetail Agent code (HTML, C#, CSS, JavaScript). It’s easy to fall into the thinking that we want our customizations within Dovetail Agent to look and behave the same exactly as how they are within the Clarify Client. While there are advantages to this (familiar app, less training, etc.), I think it’s worthwhile to revisit your customizations and take the opportunity to improve them where it makes sense. Within Clarify, there are some constraints that often cause customizations to have to be done a certain way. Within a web application like Dovetail Agent, we also have some constraints, but they’re not typically the same constraints that we had with the old Clarify Client.…

Dovetail Agent Reporting

March 24, 2015 Last year, we released our Dovetail Agent Reporting module. Dovetail Agent Reporting is a full-featured web-based reporting module for Dovetail Agent that allows non-technical end users to create and edit reports and dashboards without IT support. A set of sample reports and dashboards are included. Because every business is different, it is expected that each customer will create their own reports and dashboards that are specific to their business needs. Here’s a quick visual walkthrough of the reporting module. Dovetail Agent From within Dovetail Agent, click the Reports link to access the reporting module. A user must have the reporting privilege to see this link. Home Reporting home page, with links for creating a new report, accessing the admin console, online help, and help videos. Sample Reports A set of sample reports and dashboards are provided. New…

Markdown parser extensions

March 3, 2015 I’ve written recently about how we’re using Markdown for rich text on our solutions. Under the hood, we’re using the Remarkable library. Barrett Sonntag, one of our developers here at Dovetail, has written an excellent post on writing custom extensions for the Remarkable JavaScript Markdown parser. He includes details on extending the parser to add images to a lightbox – which we use in Dovetail Agent and in Dovetail SelfService. As he says: There were no clear examples on how to create new plugins or extensions for Remarkable though. So having worked on creating some and having a measure of success it is time to share the knowledge. I love seeing our knowledge being shared – through blogs, solutions, code samples, etc. Great stuff Barrett!

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