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Automating Deployment For Clairfy Using Rake

February 6, 2012 Gary posted recently on Automating Deployment For Clarify. A customer recently had an automation need that I answered in a similar way but rather than using NAnt I pulled from our fancy favorite new build automation tool Rake. In this post we’ll take a look at automating common database setup tasks like applying schema scripts and executing arbitrary SQL using Rake. I hope you find it useful. Where is the Code? I put together a Dovetail Automation gist with everything you need to solve two problems. Applying  Dovetail Schema Editor schema scripts. Applying all SQL scripts in a directory. Check out the readme for setup and execution instructions. Next I’ll talk a little about what each task does. Applying Schema Scripts (apply_schemascripts) This task looks for a child directory named schema below where the rakefile.rb is located. Every file in…

Moving from CDO to the Outlook Object Model

February 2, 2012 In Dovetail Agent, there has been support for a long time to integrate Microsoft Outlook into the email functionality. In the past this has been done by using Collaboration Data Objects (CDO), which is a 32-bit client library that provides access to Outlook-compatible objects through a COM-based API. As customers (and Dovetail Software employees) upgraded to Office 2010 (x64), the Outlook integration solution that tried to load the 32-bit CDO ActiveX controls or DLLs did not work. The resolution for this issue was to migrate Dovetail Agent from using CDO to use the Outlook Object Model (OOM). Opening the Session with Outlook The first step was to get access to the Outlook Object Model (OOM). In Dovetail Agent 4.5, the method for opening a session was to create a MAPI session from CDO, and then log on using the default…

Introducing Dovetail Bootstrap

January 24, 2012 Over the years we’ve grown a lot of infrastructure for building web applications on Dovetail SDK. These infrastructure pieces get used by a lot of different Dovetail products. Today we are launching Dovetail Bootstrap which packages up many handy capabilities like dynamic case history and case creation on top of common infrastructure like: model projection, authentication, logging, and session management. The core goal of Dovetail Bootstrap is to get Dovetail SDK developers up and creating web applications quickly. How do I get it? The code for Bootstrap is open and available on GitHub. Feel free to watch, fork and improve the code. We’d love to work with you to add great new things to Bootstrap. I recommend reading the ReadMe as it takes you through setting up a development environment. What Can Bootstrap Do? Bootstrap is not a product but…

Dovetail Mobile on tablets

January 17, 2012 The question has come up a few times: can I use Dovetail on a tablet?  Well, Dovetail Mobile supports mobile devices, and a tablet is a mobile device, so it should work, right? Yes, indeed it does. Our Dovetail Mobile app works great on tablets.   And for and for those Clarify customers who want to access their Clarify system via smartphones and tablets, Dovetail Mobile is a great choice for this. We’ve certainly seen more and more organizations allowing employees to use their own devices, so having apps that are compatible with a user’s device is important. Web apps are a great choice for this.   I’ve captured a few screenshots using a few different devices (iPad, Kindle Fire, and a Motorola Xoom), so you can see that Dovetail is compatible with a variety of tablets.     iPad   Kindle Fire  …

What’s new in Dovetail Mobile / Dovetail Agent Lite version 2.1

January 13, 2012 Dovetail Mobile 2.1 was recently released, so I wanted to to highlight a few of the things that are new in this release.   BTW – did you know you can subscribe to our Dovetail product release RSS feed? This allows you to stay up to date about new releases.   Unified Mobile and Agent Lite   Dovetail Mobile now provides users with 3 view modes: Classic Mobile, Modern Mobile, and Desktop.   Desktop: for laptops and desktops. Sometimes referred to as Dovetail Agent Lite. Modern Mobile: For modern mobile devices like iPhone and Android Classic Mobile: Minimalist version for older smart phones   In previous versions, you would pick either Desktop mode or Mobile mode when setting up the application. If you wanted to run Mobile and Agent Lite (Desktop mode) you would need two instances of the application.   Now,…

What’s New in Dovetail Agent 4.5 : Part 3

January 12, 2012 We’re continuing on with highlighting some of what’s New in Dovetail Agent 4.5. Part 1. Part 2. Multiple phone numbers and email addresses for contacts I’ve posted in the past about multiple email addresses for a contact, and how we have existing schema for this within Clarify, but we needed the UI to support this. Dovetail Agent now provides this UI. Contacts can now have unlimited phone numbers and email addresses. There is a new Phone/Email tab used to manage the phone numbers and email addresses for a contact. In addition, all of the additions/changes/deletes of these email and phone numbers are tracked in the activity log: Link Solutions to Closed Cases A common workflow we see here is: 1. A case is opened for a customer 2. We work with the customer to figure out a resolution to the…

What’s New in Dovetail Agent 4.5 : Part 2 : Search and Query

We’re continuing on with what’s New in Dovetail Agent 4.5. Part 1 is available here. Simplified Search Tips We’ve simplified the Search Tips page, making it easier for users to understand all of the robust searching capabilities that are available. Simplified Date Searching We’ve simplified searching using a date/time property. The baseline date/time range search can be a little cumbersome. For example, to search for items created in December of 2011: created:[20110101 TO 20111231] That syntax is still available for use, but we’ve expanded data/time searching for some common scenarios. Search for items created today: created:today Search for items created in the last 30 days: created:30days And that number (30) can be any number: created:7days, created:365days, etc. And, of course, you can combine this with other properties and keywords, and even save it as a favorite. Here’s my search for…

What’s New in Dovetail Agent 4.5 : Part 1 : Console

Dovetail Agent 4.5 was recently released, so I figured it was a good time to highlight a few of the things that are new in this release. BTW – did you know you can subscribe to our Dovetail product release RSS feed – so you’ll always know about new releases? Console Improvements We’ve improved the user interaction quite a bit in the main console pages. Right-click operations replaced by Actions button. Previously, you could right-click on an item in the console to perform workflow and log operations. This is how it used to look: Right-clicking in web-apps is not really expected. So we’ve replaced it with a more common and expected Actions button located at the top of the page. If there’s only one item selected, the menu will show all of the actions available for that item type: If…

Automated Deployment for Clarify Example

January 11, 2012 Last year I posted about automated deployments for Clarify. From that post:   Doing automatic deployments of Clarify changes is pretty straightforward. If I was starting off, I would use a contemporary build script tool such as nant or rake, and simply have it call out to your schema editing tool (Dovetail SchemaEditor, or ddcomp) to perform schema changes, use an import tool (such as Dovetail ArchiveManager, or dataex) for importing forms, and then compile your Clearbasic code using CBEX, or just import it as a DAT file using Dovetail ArchiveManager. File copying, registering components, configuring web servers, and setting permissions are all common tasks that are available in these build tools as well.   Should you also need to do additional stuff in your database, some code that uses the Dovetail SDK can be useful.   You could tie this…

Notifying the Yankee (part 2) This time with the Clarify Client

December 21, 2011 Recently I posted about how to notify the yankee, meaning the person who a case was yanked from. I showed how to make this happen within applications that use the Dovetail SDK (Dovetail Agent, Dovetail Mobile, etc.) Now, lets see how we can accomplish the same task within the Clarify Classic Client. Setup Most of the setup is the same as I covered previously. 1. Turn the participant2user pseudo-relation into an exclusive relation 2. Setup a business rule recipient alias for the “Yanked From User” 3. Create a business rule that uses the “Yanked from User” as a recipient of a rule 4. Add the participant record Add a Participant using ClearBasic To add a participant record, we can add some ClearBasic code behind form 737, which is the Yank form. Caution: this is an old-school C form, so much…