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Give, give, give

March 21, 2008 This is brilliant. Just watch: http://garyvaynerchuk.com/2008/03/20/the-8020-business-ruleheck-life/ In a similar vein, a snippet from Hugh at SXSW: We can only execute on 10 percent of our ideas. We might as well give the other 90 percent away.

A few of my common utilities

March 20, 2008 Whenever I have to do something more than a few times, I like to make a shortcut or a utility for it. I have all of these in my c:\bin directory, and I have my system path set to include c:\bin.  These utilities mean that I don't have to think about a lot of heavy syntax most of the time.   For example, to import a DAT file into my database, rather than using:   c:\bin\diet.exe -license MyDietLicenseKey -user_name sa -password sa -db_server . -db_name dovetail -import file.dat -sqllog sql.log     I just have to use:   import dovetail file.dat     Much easier to remember, and much easier and quicker to type.   Most of these are geared towards running on my development system, which is primarily SQL Server running onlocalhost with an sa password of sa.   Here's a few common…

Don't force the customer into working how we want them to work

I've run into two scenarios this week where co-workers asked me how they should handle certain requests. How these questions get answered shows how much you're in a customer-centric mindset.Customer requests a new version of a productWithin our SelfService application, we allow customers to request product upgrades. Rather than using this mechanism, a customer simply created a new support case asking to receive the latest version of one of our products that they have licensed. One of my co-workers asked me: Should we tell him to go into SelfService and request the upgrade using the mechanism we've setup?Customer requests SelfService logins for his new co-workersFrom our SelfService login page, we have a link that allows you to register for SelfService. If a customer doesn't already have a login, then can fill out the form in order to get login access.…

Creating Windows Installers: Deploying Monorail Web Applications

March 7, 2008 I recently built a small Monorail application and used my Wix-fu to build an installer and I wanted to share. Not really much to add to my previous post about building installers for web applications except that when you are deploying a Monorail (rc3) application you need to register the .castle extension as something that IIS should care about. This is pretty easy to do. Take a look at this snippet of Wix XML:Adding a handler for an ISAPI extension to the web application is just a matter of telling Wix about where it is. The ASP.Net ISAPI extension lives at the root of the .Net framework's folder. The first thing we do is use a <RegistrySearch> to find where the .Net framework lives and put that information into a property.<Property Id="NETFRAMEWORKROOT" Secure="yes"><RegistrySearch Id="NetFrameworkRoot" Root="HKLM" Key="SOFTWAREMicrosoft.NETFramework" Name="InstallRoot" Type="raw"/></Property> ... <Component…

Having a voicemail create a case in our Dovetail/Clarify system

We recently moved into new offices here at Dovetail, and with our new offices came a new phone system.One of the features of the phone system is that we can get an email whenever we get a voicemail. The email contains a WAV file of the actual voicemail recording. This allows us to easily be notified of, and receive voicemails, even when we're out of the office.The same rule applies to voicemails left on our support mailbox. So, if one of our customers calls our support line and leaves a voicemail message, we can get an email alerting us, along with the WAV file of the message.This is all well and good.But many of us are not on email all the time, and we have other notifications setup using Rulemanager, such as notifications to our mobile devices, and notifications via…

Just stating the obvious: your test environment should match your production environment

March 5, 2008 I was working an urgent support issue with a customer today who had a problem in their production system after upgrading the database client software. He said that there were no issues when he made this change in the test environment. I was surprised that the issue hadn't occurred in his test environment. Come to find out, the test environment and production environments are not the same. The test environment is Windows 2000. The production environment is Windows 2003 Server. Hence why he saw different behavior. Your test environment should match your production environment! Otherwise, it's not really a test environment for your production system. It's just an environment.   Tags:  Best Practices. Stating the Obvious. Things we learned on our first day in IT.

Neal Ford on Car Rental Counters, Enterprise IT, and Self-inflicted Complexity

February 19, 2008 Neal Ford has a good post recounting his experience at a car rental counter - the same experience I've had many times. I too often wondered - why are they typing so much? He ties this into the decisions made everyday in IT organizations at enterprises, which often yield self-inflicted complexity. No one intends for it to happen, but then no one is standing up, challenging the decisions being made, and the work being produced. I've seen this over and over again in my years of working with large enterprise IT projects.  Neal says "Going back to first principles is hard". Yes, it is. When I was in my first consulting job, on my very first assignment, doing at project at Sprint PCS, I was complaining to my boss about the assignment, and I said "but this is hard". He…

Perspectives from a sales guy

February 14, 2008 Kent Valentine, a member of our sales team, has dunked his toe into the blogging waters.I'm looking forward to reading his tales from the field, which I'm sure will offer a different perspective than what us techies have to say.

More Campfire Integration

February 13, 2008 Kevin Miller recently had a recent post talking about how we have notifications from our Clarify/Dovetail system show up in Campfire.   When a case is dispatched to our support queue, we get a notification in Campfire. That tends to be where we all "hang out", so its a perfect place for group notifications.   Kevin had another great idea today that we should also post a message when the case is accepted by someone, so that we know someone has picked it up and is working it.   A quick business rule:   Object Type: Case Rule Name/Description: Campfire notification upon case accept Start Event: Accept Cancel Events:  Conditions: [Current Owner Workgroup] = Support Action Title: Notify Campfire Action Type: Command Line  Start Action: 0 minutes From: Event Creation Using: Elapsed Time Repeat: Never Message:   c:\ruby\bin\ruby.exe C:\repo\DovetailAutomation\focus\campfire\classic-campfire.rb " [Object Type] [Object ID]  has been accepted by [Logger]. : http://www.dovetailsoftware.com/fcclient/console/console.asp?command=casebyid&param1=[Object ID] "…

Can we help you purchase more software?

As I mention in a previous post we are using Campfire a lot these days. I just asked Doc to add an account for our Dovetail to Campfire integration and it caused us to brush up against our user limit. Campfire lets you know this in a non-invasive and graceful way. As an administrator you may not like the idea of all your users seeing a message like this. But it works. Users know to expect issues if more people login and they can email the application administrator if necessary. Also making this limitation visible likely helps Campfire sell more software. At Dovetail Software our user licensing has the idea of a grace license limit. If you hit your user limit on Dovetail CRM we can allow a few more users into the system so that you have time to…