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Dovetail Hiring Developers

January 21, 2014 Dovetail Software is hiring developers to work on our HR Case Management SaaS app. We're looking for smart people to help us work on some cool stuff on cutting edge technology hosted in the AWS cloud. Help us write some code, automate some servers and push updates to happy customers!We're currently looking for:Developers and Senior Developers (this post)DevOps Engineers Company DescriptionDovetail Software is a leader in web-based HR Case Management software and Customer Support solutions that enable organizations to provide effective support for both employees and customers. Dovetail is an open, dynamic, and collaborative environment with a focus on innovation and creativity. We operate on the philosophy of "treat people right" & let our team of professionals do what we hired them to do: build & sell industry leading products.We don't punch clocks or micromanage redundant processes. Dovetail is an open…

Shaking Up our Product Line with Dovetail Agent 5

January 6, 2014 Dovetail's project to completely revamp and modernize our line of web clients for Clarify is starting to yield great results. Agent 5 is here! And it has been completely redesigned with an entirely new user interface (UI) that offers users an experience that is simpler, more usable and more enjoyable, yet still familiar.   The focus on usability means fewer steps to complete a task, fewer clicks to get to the data you need, and less time spent navigating through windows when working cases.   Agent 5 is quite literally a new experience. A few enhancements that you’ll notice immediately are:   Multi-browser Compatibility: Agent 5 works using Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox. Speed: Agent 5 is noticeably faster than Clarify and other versions of Agent. This is due in part to newer technology, optimizations during building, and less windows.…

More on the Right Questions to Ask your Software Vendors During the Selling Process

December 11, 2013 Yesterday, I posted a blog that suggested that many Companies weren't asking their Software Vendors the right questions during the selling process. Ironically, I saw two other blog posts yesterday that suggested other criteria companies should consider in their vendor selection process, both with great suggestions. The first, by Dovetail’s own Chief Strategy Officer, Kane Frisby, Vendor Evaluation - Know Your Vendors! looked at the technical aspects you should cover in your due diligence process. They addressed:Ease and speed of implementationHow to configure, today and into the futureThe importance of the upgrade process and the effort requiredHow well the application works with other applications The other blog post, by The Cynical Girl, Laurie Ruettimann addresses 6 Characteristics of Great HR Tech Companies. While not saying it directly, what Laurie is implying is that you should consider these characteristics in evaluating your software vendors because a great technology…

Do you ask your Software Vendors the Right Questions During the Selling Process?

December 10, 2013 I try to make as many visits to prospects, both to show Dovetail’s commitment, and also to get a sense as to what is going on in the market segments we compete in. During these presentations we talk about who Dovetail is and then go into a detailed demo of our product. Most of the questions the prospects ask relate to our product – what does our product do, how does the implementation work, and how good is the security of our product. All good questions, but they may not tell you everything you should know about the vendors competing for your business.   Here are a number of other questions customers should ask and why they are important:   1) Tell us how you deal with the problems that will develop during implementation, and give me an example? We…

Encouraging SelfService use

November 7, 2013 We use our Dovetail SelfService application for supporting our customers on a daily basis. It gives customers the power to access what they need, when they need it – quickly and easily. Customers have access to: knowledgebase product downloads product documentation license keys And of course, they can interact with our support staff using cases: create new cases update existing cases: add notes, upload files, change severity close cases reopen cases etc. When a case is created via SelfService, customers pick the severity of the issue, such as: Low - I've just got a question Medium - It's minor and not significantly affecting production High - Production is heavily degraded Urgent - Production down We use Rulemanager and business rules to notify our support staff. For Urgent cases, we send SMS messages and make a phone call to the on-call…

Pro Tip: Create a Solution Librarian user to keep your workspace tidy

November 4, 2013 A common request I hear from users is: How do I get solutions (knowledgebase articles) out of my WIPbins? A Solution (in baseline Clarify/Dovetail) is always in an Open condition – meaning it’s always in a user’s WIPbin. But once I’m done creating/editing it – I don’t want to see it anymore. It just clutters up my workspace. One very simple way to tackle this is to create a dummy Solution Librarian user. That way, a user can simply assign a solution to the Solution Librarian, and this takes it out of the user’s WIPbin. This is super easy to put in place, and allows user’s to keep their workspace tidy and clutter free. There are more complex options that involve customizations, but sometimes the simplest solution is the best. Hope you find this useful. Rock on.

Business Rule: Notifications on customer activities

October 25, 2013 I’ve posted in the past about how to notify the case owner when someone else logs a note to their case.  I find this especially useful when a customer does something in SelfService, or responds to an email that is processed by Dovetail Carrier. For example, if a customer logs a note to a case in SelfService, I want to know. If a customer responds to an email, and is automatically logged to a case (via Dovatail Carrier), I want to know. This post recaps information in the previous post, and adds some additional niceties to the notification message. Notification Email Here’s an example of a notification received via email:   The business rule Object Type: CaseRule Name/Description: Notify the owner when someone else logs a note to their caseStart Events: Log Note, Close Task, Phone Log, Log Email, Email…

How To: Close a case when all of its subcases are closed

August 5, 2013   I got a question today about how to close a case when all of its subcases are closed.   You could certainly add code to your application (such as the Clarify Client or Dovetail Agent), but to me, this sounds like more workflow automation, and we can do that with business rules. Plus, if you use multiple client applications (lets say the Clarify Client and Dovetail Mobile) – you don’t want to have to customize each of those apps.   To accomplish this task, we’ll create a business rule that fires when a subcase is closed. If all of its sibling subcases are also closed, then we can close the case.   First wrinkle: How do we know when all of a subcase’s siblings are also closed?   One way to do it is to look at all of…

How secure is your Clarify environment?

July 26, 2013 Is your Clarify environment the exception to most of the security policies your IT organization has implemented?  Do you have to manage special rules, privileges and procedures around day-to-day operational management of your Clarify database?  With regards to security do you find yourself saying “I wish we could get our Clarify system to do that”?   You’re not alone.  Throughout the last several years we have seen IT organizations mandate more stringent IT security policies across their infrastructure and applications, to achieve a higher degree of security.  If your company has been keeping up with newer releases of their enterprise solutions, the security that comes with those has allowed you to meet most if not all of these policy requirements.   More and more companies are moving forward with implementing some or all of the following, to meet new security…

TikaOnDotNet 1.4 Released as a Nuget

July 12, 2013 A while back I shared a post about how we were successfully able to use the excellent , yet Java based Tika text extraction library in our .NET based applications.  Along side that post I also created a GitHub repo where the code for TikaOnDotNet lives and is maintained. At Dovetail Software we continue to use this library with great success on the .NET platform. Externally I’ve gotten responses from people using the ideas in the project but often they have problems creating their own release or getting Tika up and running in their projects.  Today I gave the project some love and some polish and updated it to support being consumed as a Nuget package which makes it really easy to use from your code base. Let’s take a look at how to use Tika in your .Net projects.…