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Tag: business rule

Clarify / Dovetail Activity Streams

June 18, 2010 Ever since I heard about activity streams, I’ve been thinking about an activity stream out of our Clarify / Dovetail Customer Service system. I saw Chris Messina present about activity streams at SXSW 2010, and got even more jazzed.What are activity streams? From the activitystrea.ms wiki: ActivityStreams is a convenient and consistent way to syndicate social activities around the web.OK, how about a little more detail, perhaps with some context?I’m going to quote right from the Socialcast website here, as I think they do a good job of explaining this.Inside of every company, there can be hundreds or even thousands of sources of data. Information is generated by people (through emails and social network messages) and by systems (CRM and ERP systems, and inventory tracking, for example). Where the information flows and how it is used is strictly defined by…

Solution Workflow

April 14, 2010 When we talk about workflow within our CRM systems, we commonly talk about cases, subcases, part requests, etc. But every queueable object within our Clarify/Dovetail system can have its own workflow. Including Solutions. Many people don’t think about a workflow around their knowledge. I wanted to touch on this, and show an example of a business process, or a workflow, for Solutions. Quick recap: what is a Solution? A Solution is a description of a known problem with one or more workarounds and/or resolutions. It is a piece of re-usable knowledge. Some refer to it as a KB or KnowledgeBase article. Here’s what a Solution looks like within DovetailAgent: Pretty simple. An ID number, a title, a status, a description of the problem, and one or more workarounds/resolutions. Simple Workflow Here’s an example of a simple workflow for a Solution:…

WebHooks in Clarify/Dovetail

February 9, 2010 What is a WebHook? From the WebHooks wiki: The concept of a WebHook is simple. A WebHook is an HTTP callback: an HTTP POST that occurs when something happens; a simple event-notification via HTTP POST. A web application implementing WebHooks will POST a message to a URL when certain things happen. When a web application enables users to register their own URLs, the users can then extend, customize, and integrate that application with their own custom extensions or even with other applications around the web. For the user, WebHooks are a way to receive valuable information when it happens, rather than continually polling for that data and receiving nothing valuable most of the time. WebHooks have enormous potential and are limited only by your imagination! (No, it can't wash the dishes. Yet.) That sounds like a business rule (in Clarify…

Creating Bug-Free software

June 4, 2009 I've heard some rumblings of late about software companies claiming that they have bug-free software, while behind the scenes they are simply closing bugs that have been opened without actually fixing them. Well, this is certainly a much easier way to create bug-free software that actually having disciplined engineering practices. We can do this pretty easy by simply creating a business rule that calls a script. The business rule Object Type: Change Request Rule Name: Bug Free Rule Set: Best Practices Start Event: Create Conditions: None Action Title: Go bug free Message Type: Command Line Start Action: 0 minutes From: Event Creation Using: Elapsed Time Command Line: C:WINDOWSsystem32WINDOW~1v1.0powershell.exe C:workPowerShellScriptsGoBugFree.ps1 "[Object ID]"   The Script GoBugFree.ps1: $IdNumber = [string] $args[0]; $ClarifyApplication = [Fchoice.Foundation.Clarify.ClarifyApplication] $ClarifySession = $ClarifyApplication::Instance.CreateSession() $qualityToolkit= new-object FChoice.Toolkits.Clarify.Quality.QualityToolkit( $ClarifySession ) $bugSetup = new-object FChoice.Toolkits.Clarify.Quality.CloseCRSetup($IdNumber) $bugSetup.Status = "Will Not Fix" $bugSetup…

SMS notifications and alerts

April 6, 2009 Notifications and escalations generated by Rulemanager are an integral component of the Clarify/Dovetail system. Traditionally, email and in-application notifications are the most common notification delivery mechanisms. Digital pagers were popular years ago, but are pretty much non-existent today.   With mobile devices (iPhones, Windows Mobile, BlackBerrys, etc.) becoming almost ubiquitous, we can look to using these devices for notification delivery. And they all share a common communication platform - SMS. SMS (Short Message Service) is commonly referred to as text messaging.   So let's look at how we can use SMS as a delivery mechanism.   A while back, I detailed how to use Twitter as a notification channel, and then use Twitter to send SMS messages.   If we don't want to be coupled to a service like Twitter (which doesn't have guaranteed delivery, SLAs, etc.), we can use a very similar process, but instead…

How to notify additional people when a commitment expires

February 26, 2009 I was talking to a customer today, and they asked me about how to notify additional people when a commitment expires. For example, if a support agent makes a commitment to call the customer back at 4:00, but the agent goes home, we want to notify others within the department, so that someone else can call back the customer. When the commitment expires, Rulemanager uses a template to notify the commitment owner that the commitment has been missed. One way to accomplish this task is by customizing this commitment template. Baseline Commitment Template The baseline commitment template can be found with the following SQL: select * from table_com_tmplte where title = 'Commitment' You can also extract it using Dovetail ArchiveManager (or dataex) using a directives file that looks like: NO_EXPORT OBJECT ALL; EXPORT OBJECT com_tmplte   UNIQUE_FIELD=title   WHERE "title…

Notify the case owner when someone else logs a note to their case

May 7, 2008 In a previous post, we learned how to use a variable on either side of a business rule condition. Now, we'll create a business rule that uses this type of condition.User StoryWe'll start with a story:As a case owner, I want to be notified when someone else logs a note to my case, so that I can be kept informed of any activity on my cases.The business ruleHere's the business rule which satisfies the user story.Object Type: Case Rule Name/Description: Notify the owner when someone else logs a note to their case Start Events: Log Note Cancel Events: None Conditions: Logger != [Current Owner] Action Title: Notify  Owner Who to Notify: [Current Owner] Start Action: 0 minutes From: Event Creation Using: Elapsed Time Repeat : Never Message:RE: A note was logged to [Object Type] [Object ID] by [Logger]A note was…

Using variables on both sides of a business rule condition

Most people know that you can use a variable on the left side of a business rule condition, such as:Case Type = New EmployeeThe left side of the condition, "Case Type", is actually a business rule property that gets evaluated at runtime.The right side of the condition, "New Employee", is a string constant.Here's what it looks like in DovetailAdmin:and similarly in the Clarify Classic Client:Using variables on both sidesWe can also use a business property on the right side of the condition as well. Simply type in the exact business rule property, and surround it in square brackets.For example:Logger != [Current Owner]Here's what it looks like in DovetailAdmin: and similarly in the Clarify Classic Client:Next up - an example of a rule that uses this type of condition....

Having Rulemanager send SMS notifications via Twitter

May 5, 2008 Kevin had an earlier post discussing how Rulemanager could fire a script that would notify all queue members via Twitter when a case is dispatched to a queue. The script took the queue name as an input, queried the database for the queue members, and then sent a direct Twitter message to each queue member.I liked what he did, and wanted to see if we could take it a step further, and make it more in line with Rulemanager notifications.Making Twitter a first class Notification methodRuleManager already knows how to resolve queue members into individual users, and it knows how to resolve a notification preference of each user, depending on whether the user is on or off work hours, and also based on the urgency of the message.Years ago, many people carried digital pagers, which allowed text messages to be…

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

March 7, 2008 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…