Tag: Clarify Classic Client

Update and Modernize Your Clarify Environment

March 7, 2018 Update your Clarify Environment Dovetail has a total system approach to update and modernize Clarify and addresses all aspects of the system, from the user interface and its customization framework to the backend server applications and security. It is possible to completely overhaul your whole system or just as easily solve one or two particular issues. What our solution does is allows organizations to infuse current technologies with new life - an updated and modernized system by expanded methods of deployment, increased functionality, simplified customization and administration, as well as this: lower costs. <- Who doesn't want that? Access Through the Web Dovetail offers a completely independent framework for accessing Clarify data through the web. This framework can be used to replace your existing access points to Clarify such as the classic client, eSupport, and smart client or it can…

How To Customize the Clarify Rule Properties form to support function-based Rule Properties

January 11, 2017 Recently I discussed function-based rule properties, which allow you to add your own code for calculating a rule property value.I was asked last week about these – specifically, what if you’re using Dovetail Rulemanager, but not using Dovetail Agent. How do you define these properties? BackgroundThe property can be defined as a function using the Rule Property UI within Dovetail Agent.But if you’re not using Dovetail Agent, but you are using Dovetail Rulemanager, you can still take advantage of these.Rule properties are stored in table_prop_name. There is a new custom field named x_is_function that defines this property as a function. If set to 1, this property will be evaluated as a function. If set to 0 (default), it will not be.So you can simply create your rule property as normal, then you just need to set the x_is_function column to…

Making URLS in textboxes be clickable in the Clarify Classic Client

September 7, 2016 I was recently posed a question about how to make a URL in a textbox be automatically clickable. I’ve posted in the past about using hyperlinks in the Clarify Client, but this question was a bit different. For example, on the Account form in Clarify, there is a web site textbox. If you type in a URL in that textbox, it is automatically turned into a clickable hyperlink. Lets say that you wanted to do something similar on a custom form. You add a textbox to the form, set its contextual object properly, type in a URL, and then – nothing. It’s not automagically converted into a hyperlink. What’s going on here? Website control on the Account form What Clarify is doing on that website field on the account form is that they're actually using a multiline textbox…

Canned Responses within the Clarify Classic Client

August 22, 2016 Recently over on the Clarify forum on Toolbox.com, we had an interesting discussion around the use of canned responses within the Clarify Classic Client. I introduced the term Canned Response into that post, as the original request sounded a lot like the Canned Response feature that we recently added in Dovetail Agent. Other terms for this include snippets, templates, and saved replies. Request The original request was: Is it possible to assign a keyboard short cut for case notes field so we can auto populate certain text that is very repeatedly used. Response There's nothing out of the box within the Clarify Client to insert commonly used text within a case note. Depending on what you want to do, it's likely not a difficult customization though. I've done some similar customizations in the past. In one instance, we…

Rethinking design when migrating applications

March 27, 2015 As part of helping customers move from the Clarify Classic Client to Dovetail Agent, we often assist in porting their customization from Clarify forms and ClearBasic code into Dovetail Agent code (HTML, C#, CSS, JavaScript). It’s easy to fall into the thinking that we want our customizations within Dovetail Agent to look and behave the same exactly as how they are within the Clarify Client. While there are advantages to this (familiar app, less training, etc.), I think it’s worthwhile to revisit your customizations and take the opportunity to improve them where it makes sense. Within Clarify, there are some constraints that often cause customizations to have to be done a certain way. Within a web application like Dovetail Agent, we also have some constraints, but they’re not typically the same constraints that we had with the old Clarify Client.…

Troubleshooting Bad Time Bombs

November 1, 2012 There are times when Rulemanager will report a bad time_bomb in the system. Although it’s easy to just ignore when this happens, it’s better to diagnose the issue to understand (and resolve) the root cause. This post will walk through an approach to troubleshooting bad time bombs. Time Bombs Recall that a time_bomb record is created when events happen in the system, such as a case being created or closed, workflow actions (dispatch, accept, assign, yank), etc. Rulemanager is responsible for picking up these time bombs, and comparing them against the defined business rules in the system, to see if something should happen, such as a notification. Time Bombs Gone Bad On occasion, Rulemanager will report a bad time_bomb. This will typically show up in the Rulemanager log file. It may also be reported via email, if your Rulemanager…

Custom Events in Clarify/Dovetail: Change Priority

September 13, 2012 I’ve talked in the past about how to create custom events in Clarify/Dovetail, and how to fire business rules based on these events. In short, code needs to be written that creates a custom activity log and time bomb. A recent webinar covered details on how to do this: http://www.slideshare.net/gsherman/advanced-business-rules-part2 (starting on slide #18) For additional info, take a look at the "User-defined Business Rule Events.doc" available on the Rulemanager wiki: http://rulemanager.wikispaces.com/How-To If you also want to create a custom act_entry record, you'll probably want a custom activity code. Here's an example: https://gist.github.com/1042796 Change Priority One of our customers recently wanted to do something similar, but for Change Priority of a case. They wanted to be able to fire a business rule when the priority of a case changes. They needed this to work…

Clearing Clarify Cache Files

July 27, 2012 This will probably be old news to most of you, but there’s always new people getting exposed to Clarify, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to share. If you’ve worked with the Clarify Classic Client for any amount of time (say, more than a day), you’ve probably run into the scenario where things start to misbehave. Often, this is because the Clarify cache files get corrupt. The fix is to delete those cache files, and restart the app. The cache files will get rebuilt during app startup. What gets cached? Mostly what gets cached is: Schema (data from the ADP tables) is cached in the <databaseName>.0XX file, where XX is your schema revision. Example: testdb1.062 Forms and other metadata is cached in the <databaseName>.cfy file. Example: testdb1.cfy ClearBasic Code is cached in a boatload of files in the CBCache directory…

Getting the most out of your business rules

June 20, 2012 One of my favorite features of a Clarify/Dovetail system is the business rule. Business rules, particularly notification rules, are a cornerstone of staying up to date on what's happening in your system, and making sure nothing falls through the cracks. As we've been doing more and more Clarify System Health Checks for customers, I've observed that many organizations are either over-using or under-using business rule notifications. Overuse When there are too many notifications, they become noise, and are simply ignored. I've observed many users who have setup email filters/rules that automatically file those emails away, or even delete them. With the overabundance of emails that we all get, we're forced to attack the email problem in some way - and that typically means ignoring everything that's not critical. Except emails from my Mom. And foreigners who need me to help them…

Launching Clarify via a custom clarify:// URL

June 4, 2012 The task at hand is to be able to click on a URL (such as clarify://case/12345) and that will open case 12345 in the Clarify client. Custom URL protocols In Windows, you can create your own custom URL protocols, which allow you to register an application to a URL. In my previous post, I introduced a clarify:// URL protocol. Lets see how we can make that URL trigger the Clarify Client (clarify.exe) There’s a MSDN article that outlines the basics of doing this. Basically, you create a registry key that maps the URL to the application. And you’re URL will be passed to the application as a parameter (that’s the %1). Here’s a sample registry entry for this: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\clarify] @="URL: Protocol handled by CustomURL" "URL Protocol"="" "CustomUrlApplication"="C:\\clarify\\11.5\\client\\ClarifyClient\\clarify.exe" "CustomUrlArguments"="\"%1\"" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\clarify\DefaultIcon] @="C:\\clarify\\11.5\\client\\ClarifyClient\\clarify.exe" [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\clarify\shell] [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\clarify\shell\open] [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\clarify\shell\open\command]…