Refresh Cache actions in Dovetail Agent
Within Dovetail Agent, there are two different Refresh Cache actions
- Refresh Application Cache
- Refresh User Cache
This post is a quick rundown of what they do and how they’re different.
Refresh Application Cache
From the Admin menu, there’s a Cache option
This controls the application cache which includes schema, lists (application and user-defined), configuration items, strings, etc.
When the application starts up, a bunch of information that rarely changes is cached, to improve application performance.
The most common use of this is for when you change list values – both application lists (such as Case Type), and user-defined lists (such as Contact Expertise). You can edit your lists using Dovetail Admin, refresh the cache in Agent, and the updated list values will appear.
Refresh User Cache
On the user Profile page, there is a Refresh Cache link.
This controls the cache for the individual user. When the user logs in, some information about the user is cached to improve performance.
The most common use of this is when you change the user’s privileges or privilege class. For example, you may grant a user some additional privileges, and refreshing the user cache will update their privileges, without forcing the user to log out and back in again.
Summary
I wouldn’t consider these cache updates to be common actions, i.e. they don’t typically happen on a daily basis. But when you do need a cache to get refreshed, having this functionality available makes things a lot easier.
There are two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors.
