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Tag: clarify amdocs

Clarify Form Identifier (Or, What the heck Clarify form is that?)

January 6, 2011 On occasion, while working in the Clarify Classic Client (especially in a customer’s customized environment), I come across a form that I’m not familiar with (might even be a custom form) that I need to dive into the details of. Trying to find this form in UI Editor is not always easy. It’s common that the form name and/or title aren’t very descriptive (this even happens on baseline forms).   So I typically have to start the Clarify client with some debugging and tracing switches, and examine the log file to try and find its form ID. This works, but I think there should be an easier way. An approach from the past   One approach I’ve seen done in the past is to create a custom help file (CHM) that contains the form IDs. Then pressing F1 on a…

Auto-closing a case workflow

  A colleague asked me recently about an email he had received from the support department of one of our vendors. It looked something like:     Hello, Anne Teak, A few days ago, our support staff has replied your inquiry at: http://www.some.vendor.com/helpdesk/view-thread.aspx?thread=735746   Since then, we have not received any response back from you, and would like to know if you consider this issue to be closed. If you have any further questions, please use the link above to post them. This issue will be automatically closed out in a few days if you choose not to respond.   To access this discussion thread, navigate to the following link: http://www.some.vendor.com/helpdesk/view-thread.aspx?thread=735746     Sincerely yours, Some.Vendor Team       The gist of the process is that if a customer hasn’t responded after a certain period of time, then we…

Use rule properties in your outgoing emails

November 18, 2010 Did you know you can use rule properties in your outgoing emails (log emails)? I was recently asked this question, and I thought the answer was yes, but I wasn’t positive, so I decided to test it out (and of course document it here). Since you’ve read this far, you’ve probably figured out that the answer is Yes. In this particular scenario, I simply wanted to include the case title in the email subject. By default, the subject of the email is Regarding Case Number XXX (where XXX is the case id number). Lets create a better email subject. A little reminder before we get going – we’re talking about Log Emails that are actually sent out via RuleManager. No surprise, for my testing and usage, I’m using Dovetail RuleManager. The send_email_about_obj template When sending an email out, the send_email_about_obj…

Log Email using your mail application (such as Outlook)

October 11, 2010 A while ago I posted about using email with Dovetail/Clarify. One of the items I talked about is the Enhanced Email Out functionality within Dovetail Agent, which is a client-side integration with your MS Outlook client. This allows users to access their address books, attach files to the outgoing email, use your signature, read/delivery receipts, etc.   The way this is accomplished in via Collaborative Data Objects (CDO), a Microsoft library that exposes the interfaces of the Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI).  There area few downsides of using CDO, including the need to install CDO on each desktop, Outlook warnings/restrictions, and troubles with Office 2010. It’s not really a surprise – having a web application be able to access your Outlook application has the potential for security trouble. Use your mail client   An alternative to this is to simply pop open a…

Calling SOAP web services from cbbatch on UNIX using an Oracle procedure

October 4, 2010 Yes, you read that right - calling SOAP web services from cbbatch on UNIX using an Oracle stored procedure. Even reading that kind of makes my head hurt. But, when you're between a rock and a hard place, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. I've been working with a customer recently who has created some web services using .NET and our Dovetail SDK. He needs to able to call these web services synchronously from ClearBasic code, both from the Clarify Classic Client (running on Windows) and from cbbatch (running on UNIX). Calling web services from the Clarify Classic Client Calling web services from the Clarify Classic Client is pretty straightforward. Since we're on Windows, we can use COM and ActiveX objects to do so. A few examples of this: Using the microsoft.XmlHttp object Using the Microsoft SOAP toolkit…

Dovetail information feeds

September 2, 2010 Did you know we provide a few different information feeds that help you stay informed with information about Dovetail? By subscribing to feeds, new information is delivered to you – which means you don’t have to go visiting lots of different web sites to see if there’s new content available. Blogs There’s a RSS feed for all the Dovetail bloggers, or you can subscribe to individual bloggers, if you so wish, by visiting their page and clicking the orange RSS icons in your browser or by clicking the RSS link. Some of us also allow for subscribing by email, in case you’re not an RSS kind of person. Product Releases There’s a feed for product releases – so you’ll know when new products are available – including new revisions of existing products. Knowledgebase There’s also a feed for new knowledgebase…

Initial Response

August 26, 2010 When working cases in Clarify / Dovetail, an option available to agents is Initial Response. Initial Response allows an agent to mark that the initial response to a customer has occurred.   True to its name, an Initial Response can only occur once in the history of a case.   This Initial Response operation can be performed on either the Log Phone call or Log Email forms. Initial Response button in the User Interfaces   Phone Log form in the Clarify Classic Client:     Email Log form in the Clarify Classic Client:     Phone Log form in DovetailAgent:     Email Log form in DovetailAgent:   Activity Log   When the Initial Response action occurs, it is logged to the case activity log:   Time Bomb   When the Initial Response action occurs, a time bomb is created. Once we…

Segregating your data using Data Restriction

August 23, 2010 The Dovetail SDK (fcSDK) includes Data Restriction Technology.Data Restriction allows you to segregate your Clarify/Dovetail database so that different sets of users can use the same forms (and customizations), yet see different sets of data from the database. This can include any items such as cases, sites, contacts, parts, etc.   For example, suppose you have two different groups that support different product lines. You might set up Data Restriction so that the users in group 1 can only see group 1's sites, contacts, solutions, cases, and parts. Likewise, group 2 would only see their data. The user’s do not even know that they are not seeing all of the data from the database. Data Restriction based on Geography   A common data restriction setup is to segregate data via geography. For example, users in Europe may only see data (cases, contacts, sites,…

Closing (and reopening) a solution

August 18, 2010 A not-so-uncommon request I’ve heard over the years is the need to be able to close a solution. You can close a case, close an action item, close an opportunity – but you can’t close a solution in the out-of-the-box product. But this is a pretty easy customization – so lets walk through it. Why close a solution?   Knowledge can become outdated. But we may want to retain that knowledge, especially when we’ve linked these solutions to cases or change requests. By closing it, we can mark it as no longer relevant, and closing will also remove it from a user’s wipbin and all queues. Status and Condition   Most workflow objects have a status and a condition. We can use a similar mechanism here. We’ll use the Open and Closed Conditions (same as for a case). I create a…

Dovetail Seeker Sneak Preview

July 27, 2010 Kevin Miller did a recent sneak preview of Dovetail Seeker 2.0, which we’re hard at work on here.Here’s an additional sneak preview of search capabilities from the Agent side of things.Search attachmentsSearch case attachments, solution attachments, etc.Search external documentsSearch product documentation, whitepapers, technical bulletins, etc.