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Tag: Amdocs Clarify CRM

Clarify / Dovetail – in the Cloud

December 17, 2015 "The Cloud"Recently, we migrated our Clarify/Dovetail implementation to the cloud. Specifically, into Amazon’s AWS infrastructure.We setup a sandbox environment a couple months ago, and then migrated our production instance this month.As far as I know, we have the only Clarify production implementation running in the cloud.If you navigate to our support site at https://support.dovetailsoftware.com – that’s all running in AWS.We have multiple AWS servers/components in play, as well as some tools that we use, which I’ll cover in more detail here. Application ServerThe app server is Windows Server 2008 R2 DataCenter edition.No surprise, we run our Dovetail suite of applications, including:Dovetail AdminDovetail AgentDovetail MobileDovetail Agent ReportingDovetail SelfServiceBOLTBootstrapCarrierRulemanagerSeekerSchemaEditorArchiveManager (DIET)In addition, we also have some of our own customizations, including:Custom web servicesCustom Rulemanager actions (mostly Powershell scripts)Custom scheduled tasks (mostly Powershell scripts) Database ServerThe database server is Windows Server 2008 R2 DataCenter, running  Microsoft…

Improving our Slack integration

December 10, 2015 SlackLast year I posted about Integrating Clarify/Dovetail with your group chat app. That post was around the time we started using Slack for our group chat.At that time, I was using Slack’s simple webservice to post messages about cases. OriginalFor example, case dispatch notifications looked like:Simple. But not very detailed. ImprovedRather than just using Slack’s simple web service, I’m now using their Attachments, which allow for more richly formatted messages.Notice there’s now much more information available, including:Top-level message (In this case,  “Case Dispatch Notification”)Case IDContact and Site NameCase title (which links to the case in Dovetail Agent)SeverityQueueLink to the case in Dovetail Mobile And it’s easy to add whatever other relevant information in there that I would like. Business Rule ActionThe business rule that fires on case dispatch now calls the CaseMessage.bat file, like so:C:\Dovetail\RuleManagerActions\slack\casemessage.bat [Object ID] dovetail "Case Dispatch Notification"To that BAT file,…

Using Broadcasts to Share App Tips

December 8, 2015 BroadcastsOne of the features in Dovetail Agent is Broadcasts. I described them in a previous post.A broadcast is used to communicate a message to all users.Broadcasts appear in the user’s notification drawer – along with Notifier messages (such as from business rules).Notice the megaphone icon which helps identify it as a broadcast.Tip of the weekOne of the ways I’ve been using broadcasts here at Dovetail is to share application tips.I do it once a week, on Mondays, so my users get a Tip of the Week.Collection of TipsNotice the broadcast also includes a link to View Past Tips. This is a link to a solution within Agent that contains the collection of tips.So when I add a new tip, I create it as a broadcast, and update the solution with the new tip.SummaryThere you go – a tip about using…

Improving Log Emails

December 7, 2015 Even with today’s prevalence of web applications, a lot of service and support operation interactions are still done by email.With some recent updates to Dovetail Agent and Dovetail Rulemanager, these emails can step into modern times.A simple link in your outgoing emailIn a previous post on encouraging selfservice use,  I showed how to automatically include a link to the case within Selfservice in outgoing emails:Whenever we send an email out from a case using our Dovetail apps (Dovetail Agent, Dovetail Mobile), we include a footer in the email, like so:Notice the footer of that email:Check the status and update your case online at our SelfService site:http://support.company.com/cases/show/C12345HTML emails, including imagesMore recently,  I showed how users can send rich emails using Dovetail Agent 8, such as: Better togetherCombining these 2 ideas together means we can make our outgoing emails even nicer, with headers,…

What’s New in Dovetail Agent 8

November 13, 2015 This week we released Dovetail Agent version 8. Here’s a quick rundown of the major changes. Rich Text in Logs Agent now support rich text (using Markdown) on case/subcase logs (email, notes, research) and commitments. For example, creating a richly formatted Log Email:   And the received email looks like:   Convert Markdown to HTML for rendering rich text These rich text logs and images now render as expected in the Case History: And in the Preview Pane:   Rich text is also supported within Broadcasts:   within business rule notifications: and even within commitment messages:   Multiple count badges in tab headers Subcases tab on Case page - show open and total # of Subcases Part Request tab on Part Request Header page - show open and total # of Part Requests Contracts tab on Site page - show…

What’s New in Dovetail Agent 7

August 19, 2015 This week we released Dovetail Agent version 7. Here’s a quick rundown of the major changes.   Part Requests Logistics customers will be happy to know that we’ve brought Part Request functionality into our latest Dovetail Agent platform. This includes: Create and Edit Part Request Headers and Part Request Details Part Request Workflow operations: Accept,Assign,Dispatch,Forward,Reject,Yank,Close,Reopen Part Request Actions: Create New Part Request, Replicate Part Request Part Requests are available in My Work, Queries, Recent Items, and Search Part Request Header Part Request Detail   Batch Actions – Change Status and Log Notes Change Status and Log Note are now available as batch actions, making it easy to log a note or change the status of many cases or subcases at one time.     Range select On the query results grid (such as My Work), users can shift-click to select…

What’s New in Dovetail Agent 6

June 24, 2015 This week we released Dovetail Agent version 6. Here’s a quick rundown of the major changes.   Faster all around We’ve improved performance throughout the application, both on the front and back-end. On the back-end, we’ve upgraded our major infrastructure components (including FUBU MVC, StructureMap, and Dovetail SDK), which improves the application startup time, as well as improves the time to process every request. We’ve also made improvements to the SQL generation module, which improves the performance of many database queries. In addition, queries are no longer executed on items without any relevant filters, which means fewer queries and better overall performance. On the front-end, Dovetail Agent is now a true SPA (Single Page Application), which means navigating through the application is much faster. There are less requests from the client to the server, and less data (scripts, templates, css,…

Troubleshooting a bad business rule

June 16, 2015 When Dovetail Rulemanager has a problem processing a business rule for some reason, it logs the problem. We can use these logs to help determine exactly what the problem is, and how to fix it. We’ll walk through an example on troubleshooting a specific issue. In this scenario, Rulemanager logged an error: 2015-06-12 10:23:07 [Consumer7] ERROR FChoice.RuleManager.OperandException - FChoice.RuleManager.OperandException: (-1) Invalid operand format for an IsIn operator. It looks like there was a problem with a rule condition that uses an IsIn operator. So how do we know which rule this is referring to? There may be hundreds of rules in the system. All of the needed information is contained in the log file. But since Rulemanager is a super busy application, and it’s multi-threaded, the logs contain a LOT of information. In a log file I recently received from…

Seek and ye shall find – the power of Search in Dovetail apps

June 12, 2015 A common fixture in our apps is the ubiquitous search box.  It’s available in Dovetail Agent, Dovetail Mobile, Dovetail Agent Lite, and Dovetail SelfService. It’s even available for the Clarify Classic Client.The heavy lifting for search is all handled on the back end by the Dovetail Seeker application. But the front-end is what users interact with, so we’ll cover that here.(BTW - If you’re looking for information on Dovetail Seeker, check out one of these posts, or review the docs.)On the surface, it’s pretty easy to use – put in some search terms and find what you’re looking for.  But there’s a lot more power available, and I wanted to touch on a few of these options.For the most part, I’ll cover search within Dovetail Agent, although much of this applies to all of our applications.What can we search for?Out…

File uploads in Dovetail Agent

June 9, 2015 Adding files to an item in Dovetail Agent is a pretty common activity. File attachments are supported on the following items: cases subcases solutions contracts site parts accounts We’ve made it super easy to add a file, which uploads it to the server and “attaches” it to the item. File attachments are stored in a common location on the server. Gone are the days of file attachments in the Clarify Classic Client where a file attachment resided on someone’s C drive, and couldn’t be accessed by anyone except the user who added the file attachment. Plus-One On each item, there’s a Files tab. Click on the tab, then click the + on the tab header. (From a development standpoint, we commonly refer to this as our plus-one pattern, where you click the plus sign to add one more related item)…