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Interesting post on Case Types and Case Severity

June 27, 2008   Over on the 37signals blog, they're talking about some of their design decisions in tweaking their support request form.   In Clarify/Dovetail parlance, we have a Case Type and a Case Severity.   It seems 37signals have gone back and forth between the two, trying to capture both pieces of data in one element.   I do think there are 2 distinct values - the type of issue (billing, feature request, bug, etc.) and the severity/urgency of the issue (high, low, urgent, etc.), and I think their post shows the struggle when trying to combine them into one.   I do, however, appreciate that they are focused on keeping the submission form as streamlined, tight, quick, and as easy to use as possible.   I also like the fact that the Severity is focused on how the user feels, and uses natural language. For example, "Not…

DeleteById in Dovetail SDK

June 25, 2008 In the Dovetail SDK, there is a DeleteById method on the ClarifyGeneric object. This is useful when you know the objid of the record you want to delete. Perhaps the objid is posted to a web page, or you've pulled it out of a relation column from a different record. DeleteById is available via the .NET interface. It is not available on an fcGeneric object via the COM interface. How can we DeleteById in COM? Simply use the AddForUpdate method, then do the Delete. Example: var objid = 268435459; var modem = FCSession.CreateGeneric('modem'); modem.AddForUpdate(objid); modem.Delete(); modem.UpdateAll();

A handful of presentations on JavaScript and jQuery

June 24, 2008 John Resig (creator of jQuery) recently posted a bunch of his presentations online, focused on JavaScript and jQuery. Check 'em out. I'm fast becoming a huge fan of jQuery, and we're now using it a lot more within Dovetail Agent. Not only is the library itself cool - but the plethora of available plugins really make it rock.

Encode URLs with ClearBasic

June 23, 2008 At Dovetail one of the things we sell is Clarify Helpdesk support. This means that customers having problems with Clarify Client can get support when they run into issues. We had an interesting case recently that I thought would be good to share with the community.   Under the hood Clarify Client uses a variant of Visual Basic called ClearBasic which makes the behavior of their windows application customizable via scriptability. Using ClearBasic, Clarify developers can modify the script used behind any of the forms in the Clarify Client application. We have a customer that is integrating one of their Clarify Client forms with another enterprise application using HTTP GET Requests. They ran into a problem with GET requests getting truncated when special characters were present in the request URL. When constructing HTTP GET requests parameters you should UrlEncode the value of each parameter.…

Exposing Knowledge Using Dovetail Seeker

June 13, 2008 Dovetail Seeker is our new search offering for Dovetail CRM. One of the primary design goals from a developer's point of view is to make it easy to integrate with Seeker. I know I am biased, but think we did pretty well. In this post I'll I share my experience integrating Seeker with our public web site exposing search access to Dovetail's Knowledge Base. Why Is This A Good Idea?For a long time we've exposed to customers the ability to browse our knowledge base. Here it is:This is a pretty good solution for Dovetail administrators looking for common solutions to issues that may pop-up. A better solution would be to let users search the knowledge base for the exact issue they are running into and see what pops up. Being able to search for an problematic error message is pretty handy:Raise…

Dovetail Seeker Introduced

June 12, 2008 Stephen Lynn recently talked about our new search product in his post - Dovetail Seeker to the Rescue. Gary and I are working hard to get Seeker shipped to our customers. I wanted to post a follow up to Stephen's post to divulge some more details about Dovetail Seeker.   What is It?   Dovetail Seeker makes the data in your Dovetail CRM searchable just like Google makes the Internet searchable. All you need to do is type in a text box and click on Go.   We have worked very hard to deliver a great search solution for Dovetail CRM and I like to think we succeeded. Here is a summary of what we tried to accomplish with Seeker:   For Users: the ability to easily search for interesting data in Dovetail CRM. For Administrators: the ability to control exactly what data users can search for.…

Support by Group Chat

June 9, 2008 One of the more interesting ideas I've seen kicking around the blogosphere is support by group chat. We use Campfire here at Dovetail as a group chat application, and we love it. It allows all of us to share information, even when we may be in different cities, and working different schedules. The chat history is saved, so its easy to catch up on past conversations. Campfire also allows us to easily upload and share files and screen shots. Overall, its been a great addition to our team's communication. (On a related note - we've shown examples in the past about sending Rulemanager notifications to Campfire here and here.) I like the idea of allowing customers to jump in and join the Campfire conversation. Probably have a room specific for this purpose. Not only would it allow interactions between agents…

Cleanly Handling Ctrl-C In Console Applications

June 4, 2008 I find myself writing Console applications now and again. Command line ninjas know that if you want to stop a running console application you can hit Ctrl-C to  exit the application. In our Dovetail Seeker product, which we will be releasing with the next version of Dovetail Agent, when you cancel out of the indexer while it is running it would corrupt the search index. Not a big problem as the search indexes can be easily recreated but that can sometimes take a long time. Besides allowing scenario to exist where the user can corrupt application data is just plain wrong. Luckily it was easy to fill in this hole.   My Google-Fu took me to Curt Nichol's post on Ctrl-C and the .NET console application where he introduces the System.Console.CancelKeyPress event and demonstrates using an anonymous method for handling…

Subscribe by email

May 28, 2008 Those that know me are well aware that I'm a big fan of RSS feeds. But, I do realize that not everyone has yet jumped onto the RSS bandwagon. So if you'd like to subscribe to my blog by email, you now can. Simply click the Subscribe by Email link, and you'll get updates delivered right to your Inbox.   How about giving RSS a try? Confused about RSS? No worries. The folks over at Common Craft have put together a simple video explaining RSS in plain English. Check it out:   If the embedded video doesn't load, this is the direct link to the video.   Let your Feed Reader bring updates to you I use Google Reader for reading feeds. It's easy to use, web-based, and free! And when I find interesting articles in Google Reader, I share…

Austin Code Camp Recap

May 19, 2008 I spent Saturday with friends, co-workers, Twitter peeps, and assorted geeks at the third annual Austin Code Camp. I've been all three years, and I enjoyed this one the most. There was over 200 attendees, which was a great turnout. There was a lot of great sessions. It was also cool that a bunch of people made the drive in from Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Houston. The sessions I attended: Agile in the Enterprise Coding for Stupid Users (which was really a session on User Experience Design) Taming the Legacy Code Beast Introduction to jQuery Fishbowl talk on TDD & BDD Advanced CSS & JavaScript Of course, not only was it great to attend the sessions, but getting a chance to meet and converse with lots of cool, smart people in-between sessions and after the camp tends to be…