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Tag: clarify amdocs

Using the web APIs in Dovetail Bootstrap

March 21, 2012 Kevin recently blogged about Dovetail Bootstrap, a free, sample application which helps Dovetail SDK developers get up and going and creating web applications quickly.   The code for Dovetail Bootstrap is open and available on GitHub. Feel free to watch, fork and improve the code.   One of the capabilities demonstrated in Dovetail Bootstrap is a web API – specifically the Create Case API. I wanted to do a quick walkthrough of calling this API.   Wikipedia has this to say about Web API: A web API (Application Programming Interface) is typically a defined set of HTTP request messages along with a definition of the structure of response messages, typically expressed in JSON or XML. While "web API" is sometimes considered a synonym for web service, the Web 2.0 applications typically have moved away from SOAP-based web services towards more direct REST-style communications.   The example we’re showing here fits into this definition nicely. Simple, direct, REST-style interfaces. Usage  …

Clarify Technical Consultants

March 19, 2012 For any of you Clarify peeps out there looking for a gig, I was contacted by some folks looking for Clarify developers for a 6 month position in New Jersey. Sounds like you need to be onsite in NJ. Could turn into a longer gig if things work out.   You must know the Classic Clarify Toolset: Classic Client, ClearBasic, UI Editor, etc.   Knowledge in any of the following is a bonus: Sql Unix shell scripting, Perl UDB/DB2 MQ Series XML, XHTML, HTML Tuxedo C / C++ Java, J2EE   If you’re interested, contact me, and I’ll connect you with the right people.   Also, if this position isn’t right for you, but you’re interested in some Clarify consulting work now or in the future, reach out to me anyway. I tend to get a bunch of requests for Clarify developers, and…

The Undo UI Pattern – even in Clarify using ClearBasic

February 23, 2012 A common UI pattern you see today is the Undo pattern.   The Undo pattern, as described by Patternry:   People tend to make mistakes when interacting with applications. Making one mistake can throw away hours of work. Therefore users should be have an option to easily undo their actions and get their work back.   What problem does the pattern solve? Whenever there is an opportunity to lose work, the program should allow undo actions. The more costly it is to lose data, the more important it is to provide undo. Never use a warning when you mean undo.   This pattern is inspired by Aza Raskin’s article “Never Use a Warning When you Mean Undo”. Undo in Clarify   We see this pattern a lot in contemporary applications, but there’s no reason you can’t also implement this pattern in legacy…

Notifying the Yankee (part 2) This time with the Clarify Client

December 21, 2011 Recently I posted about how to notify the yankee, meaning the person who a case was yanked from. I showed how to make this happen within applications that use the Dovetail SDK (Dovetail Agent, Dovetail Mobile, etc.) Now, lets see how we can accomplish the same task within the Clarify Classic Client. Setup Most of the setup is the same as I covered previously. 1. Turn the participant2user pseudo-relation into an exclusive relation 2. Setup a business rule recipient alias for the “Yanked From User” 3. Create a business rule that uses the “Yanked from User” as a recipient of a rule 4. Add the participant record Add a Participant using ClearBasic To add a participant record, we can add some ClearBasic code behind form 737, which is the Yank form. Caution: this is an old-school C form, so much…

Notifying the Yankee

October 31, 2011 Last we left off, we turned a pseudo relation into an exclusive relation. Specifically, we created a participant2user relation, which allowed us to traverse from an activity to the user who participated in the activity with a path like: focus_obj2act_entry:fact2participant(role_code=1):participant2user:login_name Real World Usage As promised, lets give this some real world usage. Specifically, lets use this to notify someone when a case (or other workflow object) is yanked from them. A few years ago, I showed how to implement yank notifications by email. In that post, I gave some details about the challenges behind using a business rule to do this: The problem with implementing this as a business rule is that there is no data that holds onto the previous owner. Clarify's solution to this is to have the Classic Client always send an integrated Notifier message (insert into…

Case Aging, including “pauses”

October 7, 2011 Over the years of working with Clarify, I’ve seen a request come up a few times for calculating case aging, including “pauses”.   It’s easy to calculate a total case age. For open cases, it’s the difference between now and the time the case was opened. For closed cases, it’s the difference between case open time and case close time.   But what about the workflows where a case can be paused? For example, the customer may go on vacation, or any other myriad of reasons where we want to pause the clock on the case.   The common approach to this from an application standpoint is to have a new case Status value of Paused (or something similar), so that we simply change the status to Paused to pause the case, and then change it to something else to…

New in Rulemanager: Support for Multiple email addresses for a contact or employee

October 5, 2011 Earlier this summer I blogged some thoughts around multiple email addresses for a contact or employee. I wanted to throw out a little update about how we’re addressing this. We’re addressing this in two ways – via Rulemanager, and via DovetailAgent. I’ll cover the DovetailAgent changes in a future post. Rulemanager We’ve modified Dovetail Rulemanager so that it supports multiple email addresses in a single email field. This could be on the employee or on the contact’s email field. The email addresses can be separated by a comma, semicolon, or a space. Lets see it in action I’ve created a new employee with the ever-so-descriptive name of “Multiple Emails” This employee has two SMTP addresses in the one email address field: If I have a business rule that notifies this employee, I can see that the notification gets sent to…

ClearBasic cbbatch tip: Display the line number of the most recent error

September 27, 2011 After over a decade of doing ClearBasic coding, I’m still learning new things.   Today, Marek pointed out the Erl function, which returns the line number of the most recent error.   Within the Clarify Client, if you use the –debugCB option, you’ll get the line number of the last CB error, so it’s pretty easy there.   But in cbbatch, it doesn’t tell you the line number. Error message, no line number   For example, I have a simple cbbatch script that I’ve coded with an error.   Notice how it tells me the error, but it doesn’t tell me *where* the error is.   Let caveman debugging commence. Ugh. More error details   Now, lets add a simple error handler.   At the beginning of my routine, I add an On Error statement: On Error Goto ErrorHandler   And then at the end of…

Interesting Business Rule using MTM properties and aliases

September 9, 2011 I was recently presented with an interesting business rule requirement from a customer. the objective here is when someone closes a case, I can use Rulemanager to send an email to the related CR owner.   Lets give it a whirl. Data Model   First, lets recall the data model.   Cases are linked to solutions (probdesc/workaround), and solutions are linked to Bugs (CRs, Change Requests).   Case >---  Workaround  >--- Probdesc >---<  Bug   A case is related to one workaround, a workaround is related to one probdesc, and a probdesc can be related to many CRs.   So we have a MTM in play (between probdesc and bug) – which makes this a bit interesting, and uncommon. Applications In Use   I'm using Dovetail Admin for configuring rules and rule properties, and Dovetail Rulemanager for processing the rules. Rule Properties   We’re going to need some new…

Reminder: Clarify / Dovetail Schema 201 webinar this week

August 22, 2011 Just a little reminder that I’ll be presenting a session on advanced schema topics this Wednesday. We already have a good number of registrants, so it seems like a topic that folks are interested in. Cool! Topics SQL Views Many-To-Many Tables Role Objects Pseudo Relations Exclusive Relations Change Fields Closer look at the ADP tables Those are the topics I have planned to cover. If there’s anything else you’d be interested in, please let me know, and I’ll see what I can do. When Wednesday, August 24, 2011 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM (Central Time) Register Register at: https://dovetailsoftwareevents.webex.com/dovetailsoftwareevents/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=669502491