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What’s New in Dovetail Agent 14

January 3, 2017 We recently released Dovetail Agent version 14. Here’s a run-down of the highlights.   User-Configurable home pageUsers can now set their home page to be any page within the app - such as a queue or a query.For example, perhaps you’re a manager who doesn’t work cases. In this case, you may wish your home page to be My Workgroup's Open Items or one of your custom queries.By default, Home is the same as My Work.To set your home page, use the s+h keyboard shortcut while you’re on any page in the app. Or set it on the User Preferences page.Clicking the Home icon (or using the g+h keyboard shortcut) will take you home.Clicking the My Work icon (or using the g+w keyboard shortcut) will take you to My Work.From the User Preferences page, you can also set or reset your…

How to Automate a Workflow Process by Combining function based Rule Properties and the SDK Toolkit extension

December 21, 2016 When working with parent-child cases, a common workflow is to close the parent case when all the child cases have been closed.We can easily automate this workflow using Dovetail tools and applications. Business RuleHere’s the rule that I want to create:When the last child case is closed, close the parent case.In order for this rule to function, I need to know when the last child case is closed.I can do that by looking at the number of open child cases on the parent case. When this number is equal to zero, I know that all of the children have been closed.But, out of the box, this number is not an available property.But I can easily create my own, using the function-based rule property functionality.  NumberOfOpenChildCasesOnParent Rule PropertyFollowing the examples, I can create my own function-based rule property.Given the child case objid, I…

Introducing Custom Function-based Rule Properties

December 20, 2016   Rule Properties Rule properties are used in a number of places throughout the Dovetail suite, including: Business Rule Conditions Business Rule Action Messages Canned Response Variables Task Manager Properties Email Log Templates Traditionally, a rule property would traverse a path through the schema, starting from the base object, and ending at a column. For example, the Contact First Name property for a case would use the path case_reporter2contact:first_name. However, there are instances where a path cannot be traversed, or where a calculation needs to be made.   Counts For example, you may wish to fire a business rule only if all of the subcases on a case have been closed. So your two business rule conditions would be: Number of Subcases is greater than zero Number of Open Subcases is equal to zero Or, you may wish to fire…

Experiment: SelfService Timeline

December 6, 2016 One of the things we’ve been experimenting with here at Dovetail is the SelfService Timeline.When looking at a case in Dovetail Agent, a support agent can see some details about what activities a customer performed within our Selfservice app around the time they created a case.Agents can see:When a customer logged inWhat searches they performed, along with how many search results they got backWhich solutions (knowledgebase articles) they viewedAny comments/feedback left on a solutionIt shows any activities that customer within a 1 hour window before and after the case was created.This arms agents with additional information and context about what the customer did around the time they created a case, and agents can avoid providing the same information to a customer. Improve knowledge sharingIn addition, it gives the support center more insight into the specific words or phrases that customers are…

Demystifying the focus_obj2act_entry relation

December 5, 2016 I’ve had multiple people inquire lately about the focus_obj2act_entry relation.It’s definitely a bit of a magic relation, and can be confusing, so I figured it was time to blog about it. Business rule properties allow you to define a value that is determined by traversing through the schema starting from a particular object.For example, the Site Name property for a Case has a path of case_reporter2site:name. So when this rule property gets resolved, the property evaluator knows how to turn that schema path into actual SQL, such as:select name from table_case, table_site where case_reporter2site = table_site.objid and table_case.objid = {The Objid of the Case in Context}Pretty straightforward. focus_obj2act_entry propertiesWhen looking at existing business rule properties, you may notice that some of them start with the relation focus_obj2act_entry.For example, the Logger property uses focus_obj2act_entry:act_entry2user:login_name Notice the "focus_obj2act_entry" part of the path. If you look…

Customizing Dovetail Agent

November 18, 2016 Adding customizations in Dovetail Agent, as of version 13, incorporates numerous changes that make the application easier to customize and extend.Stepping through a simple example will demonstrate how those changes make it easy to add a customization. OverviewThis example shows a customization to enhance the console, adding some eye-catching color for Cases that have a severity level that needs attention. If a Case has a Medium severity, the row should be pink, orange for a High severity Case, and if a Case severity is Urgent, then make the row red.By default, all rows in the console have a white background, so adding some colors will make those cases stand out. Cases with severity levels below Medium will still have the white background. RoadmapTo accomplish this customization, the Cases with raised severity shown in the Case grid on the console need to have…

How To Query Case Activities in Dovetail Agent

November 14, 2016 I recently posted about how to Query Anything with Dovetail Agent. Specifically I showed how to setup a custom query for part inventory.In this post, we’ll look at creating a specialized flavor of a existing query.We have built-in query capabilities for work items (including cases), but instead, lets walk-through an example of allowing for querying on case activities.For example, show me how many cases were dispatched to the benefits queue in the last 90 days.For case activities, we’ll need to query the activity log (table_act_entry). In general, I discourage querying against this table using your online production database, as it’s typically the biggest table in the database, and queries against this table can adversely affect performance for everyone using the system. But, depending on your particular use case, your database, database size, database tuning, etc – this may be ok.You…

Customer Success Story: custom workflow using the SDK Toolkit extension in Dovetail Carrier

Recently, I talked about the new SDK Toolkit Extension in Dovetail Carrier, which allows for executing methods within the Dovetail SDK Toolkits, without writing any code.I also discussed how I was able to remove some custom scripts from our own production environment, and replaced them with this new SDK Toolkit extension.I absolutely LOVE this new capability within the system, and I’m super excited to see how our customers use this power.I received an email from one of our customers this past week detailing how they’ve been able to take advantage of this new functionality.Just wanted to pass along that we implemented a biz rule action to call into the Support SDK directly in PROD.  Pretty awesome stuff!   Use case here is that an external process creates cases in our system via a sproc, but they wanted some additional controls as…

Query Anything with Dovetail Agent

November 11, 2016 In this post, we’ll look at how to create new ad-hoc queries to query anything in your system, purely via configuration.For those that have been around the Clarify/Dovetail/First Choice space for a while, you might remember that we used to have an add-on product for the Clarify Client named Query Anything. So yes, this post title is a nod to that. This is a continuation of the series on queries within Dovetail Agent, so it might be useful to first review the previous posts:An overview of configuring queries in Dovetail AgentHow to override the baseline queries Out of the box, Dovetail Agent allows for ad-hoc queries on:AccountsContactsContractsEmployeesSite PartsSitesThese are all great – but its common that we want to query on other objects – other baseline Clarify objects, or even custom objects.Lets walk through an example of how to do this. Inventory QueryFor this…

Customizing baseline queries in Dovetail Agent

November 10, 2016 In my last post, I covered the Query Filter Config files, and how they’re used to define a query.Now, lets have a look at how we can override the baseline queries, customizing them for your specific implementation.  Customizing a filter config doesn't mean you have to write rewrite the existing ones. You can write a config file just describing the customizations you need.We call these Filter Overrides.Using filter overrides, we can:remove a Columnremove a Facetremove a Fieldadd a Facetadd a Fieldadd a Columnadd a Join Example Filter OverrideThis is an example of a custom filter override file.We’ll override the Cases query, which is part of My Work, and adhoc queries on Work Items.<filter overrides="Cases">   <!-- Remove priority as a facet and as a output column -->   <removeFacet key="priority" />   <removeColumn key="priority" />   <!-- Remove the created column. We'll…