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Commitment Templates

In our last episode, we looked at Commitments in Dovetail Agent.

When a commitment expires, or is about to expire, the system will notify the user. Rulemanager is what sends out the notification, and the content of the notification message is defined by the commitment templates.

Lets take a look at these templates, and see how we can make them better.

Templates

There are two templates in the system that are used for commitments: Commitment and Warning. These are stored in table_com_tmplte.

With the commitment enhancements that we’ve made to Dovetail Agent, we can also enhance the commitment templates to provide more information and context.

Commitment Template

Here’s the commitment template we provide with Dovetail Agent.  They’re simply DAT files that you import using dataex or DIET.

The interesting part of the template is really the action field:

RE: Commitment Escalation for <ADDITIONAL_INFO>
The following commitment has expired:
<FOCUS.title>

This commitment is for <ADDITIONAL_INFO>:
http://myserver/support/[Focus Type]s/[Case ID][Subcase ID]

Commitment Due Date: <FOCUS.sched_cmpltime>

Commitment Notes:
<FOCUS.x_notes>

Compare that with the baseline Clarify commitment template:

RE: Commitment Escalation
Commitment <FOCUS.title> of <ADDITIONAL_INFO> has expired at <FOCUS.sched_cmpltime>.
Here is a transcript of this commitment:

Commitment History:

<FOCUS.cmit_history>

Message

It’ll be easier to look at an actual commitment email message rather than a DAT file.

Lets compare a commitment escalation/expiration message sent using the baseline template:

commitment.clarify

and one using our updated template:

expired

Notice that we’ve:

  • added more context – including the object type (case) and ID (1580) in the subject, as well as made that more prominent in the body.
  • added commitment notes.
  • added a link to the actual case.
  • removed the transcript history (as that’s not what is really important at this point in time).

We also enhance the Warning commitment template in a similar fashion:

warning

Custom Commitment Fields

We’ve enhanced the commit_log with a couple of custom fields:

  • x_focus_type – The type of the main object for this commitment. case, subcase, bug, etc.
  • x_notes – Commitment notes.

Dovetail Agent populates those fields when creating/editing a commitment.

Custom Rule Properties

We’ve added a few custom properties to add more context to these messages:

  • Focus Type – The type of the main object for this commitment. case, subcase, bug, etc.  – commit_log.x_focus_type
  • Case ID – the case id number – case_commit2case:id_number
  • Subcase ID – the subcase id number – subc_commit2subcase:id_number

These allow us to add the context we want to the message, and also include a link directly to the case or subcase.

Summary

By using the extensibility afforded to us within the Clarify/Dovetail system, we’ve enhanced an existing function, making it much more useful and user-friendly.

While still maintaining compatibility with the Clarify Classic Client.

Hope you dig it.