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Auto-closing a case workflow

January 6, 2011   A colleague asked me recently about an email he had received from the support department of one of our vendors. It looked something like:     Hello, Anne Teak, A few days ago, our support staff has replied your inquiry at: http://www.some.vendor.com/helpdesk/view-thread.aspx?thread=735746   Since then, we have not received any response back from you, and would like to know if you consider this issue to be closed. If you have any further questions, please use the link above to post them. This issue will be automatically closed out in a few days if you choose not to respond.   To access this discussion thread, navigate to the following link: http://www.some.vendor.com/helpdesk/view-thread.aspx?thread=735746     Sincerely yours, Some.Vendor Team       The gist of the process is that if a customer hasn’t responded after a certain period of time, then we…

AJAX to the rescue!

November 29, 2010 Situation   One of our Dovetail Agent customers ran into an issue trying to log an email that contained extended ASCII characters. One of the email pages supports creating emails with multiple file attachments, and uses a VB component called aspSmartUpload to process the email form. The issue in this case is that aspSmartUpload (version 3.3) does not have support for CodePage recognition, so extended ASCII characters don’t get passed through in the correct character set. The email would be sent correctly, but the email history was being saved to the database with the incorrect characters. Solution   After vainly searching for a newer version of aspSmartUpload, it was decided to save the text fields before the form submission, and to retrieve and use the text data for the email history, without having to drastically change the email pages or…

Use rule properties in your outgoing emails

November 18, 2010 Did you know you can use rule properties in your outgoing emails (log emails)? I was recently asked this question, and I thought the answer was yes, but I wasn’t positive, so I decided to test it out (and of course document it here). Since you’ve read this far, you’ve probably figured out that the answer is Yes. In this particular scenario, I simply wanted to include the case title in the email subject. By default, the subject of the email is Regarding Case Number XXX (where XXX is the case id number). Lets create a better email subject. A little reminder before we get going – we’re talking about Log Emails that are actually sent out via RuleManager. No surprise, for my testing and usage, I’m using Dovetail RuleManager. The send_email_about_obj template When sending an email out, the send_email_about_obj…

Log Email using your mail application (such as Outlook)

October 11, 2010 A while ago I posted about using email with Dovetail/Clarify. One of the items I talked about is the Enhanced Email Out functionality within Dovetail Agent, which is a client-side integration with your MS Outlook client. This allows users to access their address books, attach files to the outgoing email, use your signature, read/delivery receipts, etc.   The way this is accomplished in via Collaborative Data Objects (CDO), a Microsoft library that exposes the interfaces of the Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI).  There area few downsides of using CDO, including the need to install CDO on each desktop, Outlook warnings/restrictions, and troubles with Office 2010. It’s not really a surprise – having a web application be able to access your Outlook application has the potential for security trouble. Use your mail client   An alternative to this is to simply pop open a…

ASP.NET Security Fix Now on Windows Update

October 5, 2010 I had recently blogged about a security vulnerability in ASP.NET. Microsoft has released a security fix for this issue that is available through Windows Update. Details and frequently asked questions are available. Please make sure to install these updates as soon as possible on your servers.

Calling SOAP web services from cbbatch on UNIX using an Oracle procedure

October 4, 2010 Yes, you read that right - calling SOAP web services from cbbatch on UNIX using an Oracle stored procedure. Even reading that kind of makes my head hurt. But, when you're between a rock and a hard place, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. I've been working with a customer recently who has created some web services using .NET and our Dovetail SDK. He needs to able to call these web services synchronously from ClearBasic code, both from the Clarify Classic Client (running on Windows) and from cbbatch (running on UNIX). Calling web services from the Clarify Classic Client Calling web services from the Clarify Classic Client is pretty straightforward. Since we're on Windows, we can use COM and ActiveX objects to do so. A few examples of this: Using the microsoft.XmlHttp object Using the Microsoft SOAP toolkit…

Now available: Dovetail Mobile 2.0

September 30, 2010 Dovetail Mobile Agent 2.0 is now available. New functionality in Dovetail Mobile Agent includes: Subcase Functionality (creating, editing, closing, workflow, logging of phone calls, emails and notes, searching, privileges, etc.) Password Reset, allowing a user to reset their own password, should it be lost or forgotten  Searching of files and attachments (case attachments, solution attachments, etc.) using Dovetail Seeker 2.0 Application-level privilege, allowing administrators to control which users can use Dovetail Mobile Agent. Data Restriction, allowing different groups of users to only see certain data within the system Subcases Search for files and attachments   Password Reset   Documentation Dovetail Mobile Agent documentation is available online. Get it! To obtain this release, create a request using Dovetail SelfService, or send us an email.

Now available: Dovetail Seeker 2.0

Dovetail Seeker 2.0 Dovetail Seeker 2.0 is now available. A couple of previous blog posts gave some sneak peeks into the major enhancements. Rich Document Indexing We have added the ability to index and search the contents of rich documents such as Portable Document Format (PDF) or Microsoft Office documents.  You can now index and search attachments (case attachments, solution attachments, etc.) You can also index and search files (that aren’t attachments), such as product documentation, whitepapers, etc. An example of searching attachments: An example of searching external documents:   New Architecture Benefits We are now using a message oriented architecture for document indexing. This means that Dovetail Seeker is easier for us to maintain. Better yet it's performance has markedly improved. Another benefit is that you can now re-index individual dovetail or file specifications. In fact, modifying the document…

Information regarding the recent ASP.NET Security Vulnerability

September 21, 2010 Microsoft recently released a Security Advisory in regards to a vulnerability in ASP.NET. We take security seriously here at Dovetail Software and wanted to let you know how this affects your Dovetail Software products. Scott Guthrie, Corporate VP at Microsoft in charge of ASP.NET, has posted information regarding this issue, and some Frequently Asked Questions about it. He has recommended that customers immediately apply a workaround (described below) to prevent attackers from using this vulnerability against your ASP.NET applications. Dovetail Applications Affected: Dovetail Mobile Agent Dovetail Seeker This can also affect any custom ASP.NET applications that you’ve created, including those that use the Dovetail SDK. We are working on updated releases to these products and will notify our customers via our normal product release update channels when these releases are available. We are also emailing all of our customers who…

Dovetail information feeds

September 2, 2010 Did you know we provide a few different information feeds that help you stay informed with information about Dovetail? By subscribing to feeds, new information is delivered to you – which means you don’t have to go visiting lots of different web sites to see if there’s new content available. Blogs There’s a RSS feed for all the Dovetail bloggers, or you can subscribe to individual bloggers, if you so wish, by visiting their page and clicking the orange RSS icons in your browser or by clicking the RSS link. Some of us also allow for subscribing by email, in case you’re not an RSS kind of person. Product Releases There’s a feed for product releases – so you’ll know when new products are available – including new revisions of existing products. Knowledgebase There’s also a feed for new knowledgebase…