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Warning – There are no more bins left to pick from

January 31, 2011 Using the Pick API to reserve parts for part requests is usually one of the easier API calls made from the Logistics Toolkit. Just specify the part request and preference of picking from good or bad stock, and let the API go to work. The Pick API will continue to attempt to pick parts until it has reserved all of the inventory necessary, or run out of locations to pick from. There are three basic result paths for the Pick API: success, error, and partial success. The return codes for the API fall into these 3 areas as well. When successful, the return code is 0. When there is an error, the return code is < 0 (negative), and when there is partial success, the return code is > 0 (positive). All of the Dovetail API return codes are structured…

Using UltraEdit’s function list with Dovetail Schema files

A question recently came up on how to use UltraEdit to show the list of all of the objects in a Dovetail SchemaEditor Data Dictionary file. A Data Dictionary file is a complete definition of a schema. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I rarely use complete schema files, preferring instead to work with simpler schemascript files. Although I often use UltraEdit for editing text files, I rarely use UltraEdit for editing XML files. I prefer Visual Studio, with its integrated support for XSD, which gives me intellisense and syntax checking. Regardless, I dove into UltraEdit configuration, and with a bit of help from Sam Tyson, I figured out how to make this work. Function List We’ll use UltraEdit’s function list functionality to make this work. In my version (UltraEdit 16), it’s accessed by the menu: View –> Views/Lists –>…

Reminder: Search webinar this week

Just a little reminder that I will be hosting a webinar this week on use of search in Clarify / Dovetail systems. Topics Search usage Search Technologies – Traditional and Contemporary Use of search in different applications Search as part of workflow Architecture Extensibility Demonstrations When Wednesday, February 2, 2011 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM (Central Time) Register Register at: https://dovetailsoftwareevents.webex.com/dovetailsoftwareevents/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=661099603

Using the URL Rewrite module to set your cookies to HttpOnly

January 20, 2011 A question recently arose about how to set a cookie to be HttpOnly. An HttpOnly cookie is one that cannot be accessed through client-side script. Any information contained in an HTTP-only cookie is less likely to be disclosed to a hacker or a malicious Web site. The use of HTTP-only cookies is one of several techniques that, when used together, can mitigate the risk of cross-site scripting. Setting a cookie to be HttpOnly One way to set a cookie to be HttpOnly is to change how you define it. Rather than something like this: Response.Cookies("mycookie") = “foo”; We can do this: Response.AddHeader "Set-Cookie", "mycookie=foo; HttpOnly" Pretty simple. What about cookies you don’t create yourself? This works great for cookies that you create yourself. But what about those that are created by IIS and ASP, such as the ASPSESSION cookie? One…

Some recent SelfService changes

January 19, 2011 In addition to our recently updated corporate website, we also updated our customer SelfService portal. I wanted to comment on a few changes that were made as part of that. Ditching the Case Type One of things we eliminated was the case type. When customers create a new case, they no longer have to choose a case  type. And the case type isn’t shown on the view case page. We do have (and use) different case types, including Problem, Question, Help Desk, Sales, Support Renewal, and a bunch more. However, when it comes to a technical support issue submitted from our customers – we don’t treat those cases any differently depending on the case type that the customer picked. Whether the customer picks Problem, Question, or Help Desk – it doesn’t matter to us. We don’t do any different work,…

Complimentary Webinar – Contemporary Search for Clarify / Dovetail Systems

January 18, 2011 For years, organizations have been filling their CRM system with information. A common challenge is finding this valuable information within. In this webinar, we’ll cover traditional approaches to search (including the challenges of these approaches), and then we’ll look closely at use of a more contemporary search solution, including non-traditional ways to use search within a Clarify / Dovetail system.   Topics Search usage Search Technologies – Traditional and Contemporary Use of search in different applications Search as part of workflow Architecture Extensibility Demonstrations When Wednesday, February 2, 2011 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM (Central Time) Register Register at: https://dovetailsoftwareevents.webex.com/dovetailsoftwareevents/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=661099603 Call for Ideas Have something specific you’d like to hear or discuss in the Search webinar? Let’s hear it! Have an idea for a topic for a future session? Please share! We'd love to hear your ideas. Interested in presenting,…

Making ASP.Net Custom Errors Less Dookie

January 13, 2011 I wanted to share some lessons learned from an experience recently adding custom error pages to one of our FubuMVCprojects deployed to IIS7.   Treat your users well Having good looking error pages in your app is a nice sign of polish. They mean that you care about your user’s experience even when things go wrong. Github, who always seems to knock it out of the park, recently updated their error pages. I love the 404 page complete with parallax JavaScript effects.   ASP.Net has this all handled right?   Sure they do. Well sort of. Lets take a look at your web.config.   httpErrors – good for static content   An httpError seems to allow you to customize error pages for static sites and the parts of your app that do not flow through the ASP.Net runtime. For us this worked well for our…

jQuery Rocks! – Selecting all of the text from a table column

January 11, 2011 On occasion it is nice to be able to select and copy the contents of a column from a table element. Using jQuery, this is a simple task that takes advantage of the following jQuery features:   Event Handling - for the double-click of the column header Selectors - to determine which DOM elements to process Traversing - start from a TH that is double-clicked and find which column of the table it represents, then find all of the column TDs Iteration - process each of the TDs in a column Attributes - get the text for each TD, and change the TD's Class   With a standard-format table, it is easy to add an event handler to the header TH element. Click here to view a simple example of a such a table. It has a header and a body, and has…

Dovetail Self Service

January 10, 2011 In addition to the recent update to the Dovetail Software website, a new version of Dovetail Self Service was also put into place. The new site has a lot of new features, and was developed internally by the team of Kevin Miller, Josh Arnold, and Joey Vano, which was led by Gary Sherman.The best feature of Self Service is still the ability to search the Dovetail Software Knowledge Base. Customers have access to this through Self Service for their own cases, and can also search all of the Solutions in the Knowledge Base as well.One of the best new additions to Dovetail Self Service is the ability for customers to view their products, where they can download the latest version, explore each product's documentation, and see support and license information.Dovetail Self Service users can also create new support cases with an intuitive new form.…

Clarify Form Identifier (Or, What the heck Clarify form is that?)

January 6, 2011 On occasion, while working in the Clarify Classic Client (especially in a customer’s customized environment), I come across a form that I’m not familiar with (might even be a custom form) that I need to dive into the details of. Trying to find this form in UI Editor is not always easy. It’s common that the form name and/or title aren’t very descriptive (this even happens on baseline forms).   So I typically have to start the Clarify client with some debugging and tracing switches, and examine the log file to try and find its form ID. This works, but I think there should be an easier way. An approach from the past   One approach I’ve seen done in the past is to create a custom help file (CHM) that contains the form IDs. Then pressing F1 on a…