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Tag: Clarify

Commitments in Dovetail Agent

January 26, 2015 Like a lot of the work we do here at Dovetail, we try to deliver newer, cooler, better software, while still maintaining compatibility with Clarify as much as we can. The commitments functionality in Dovetail Agent is a good example of this. What is a commitment? From the Clarify docs: A commitment is a promise to perform some action by a certain time, such as a promise to call back a customer with a progress update. To keep track of this promise, you can make a commitment. Some folks call them reminders, or ticklers. New Commitments Lets compare the new commitment form in Clarify vs. in Dovetail:   Notice a couple of things: We’ve simplified it down to just the core fields- title, due date, warning (reminder) and notes. We default the due date to be now + 24 hours…

Dovetail Agent: Hello Tags, Goodbye WIPbins

January 23, 2015 Within Dovetail Agent, we’ve replaced WIPbins  with tags. I wanted to explain a bit of the difference, and some of the reasons why we did so.What’s a WIPbin?Your WIPbins (Work In Process bins) contain the objects on which you have agreed to work (that is, objects you have accepted from a queue) or that have been assigned to you.Think of WIPbins like folders that can be used to organize your work.What’s a tag?Wikipedia says:In information systems, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information (such as an Internet bookmark, digital image, or computer file). This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching. Tags are generally chosen informally and personally by the item's creator or by its viewer, depending on the system.Tagging an objectTagging…

Integrating Clarify/Dovetail with your group chat app

September 19, 2014 Here at Dovetail, we’ve evolved our use of group chat over the years. We used to use Campfire, then went to Hipchat, and now we use Slack. Our dev and support teams are in Slack all day, and I find it much more enjoyable than email. I’ve noticed that the amount of email we deal with now is considerably less. It’s integrated with Github, so we get notifications on Github issues and code commits. And, of course, we post messages based on business rules from Clarify/Dovetail.  For example, a message is auto-posted when a case is dispatched and when it is accepted. As a group, we often discuss a case to help the case owner get it resolved. And this discussion happens in our group chat.  Slack really is pretty awesome. Regardless of which group communication tool you use, it’s…

Enhanced queries functionality in Dovetail Agent 5.6

August 18, 2014 With the 5.6 release of Dovetail Agent we've really amped up the querying functionality. This is a quick walkthrough of some of the new functionality. Queries Page Click on the Query list icon in the sidebar.This takes you to your Queries page. From here you can: View your existing queries Share, Delete, and Favorite queries View queries that you've subscribed to View queries that have been shared to you Create It Click on the green + icon on the My Queries tab header to start a new queryNow we can add our filters Click on the + (Add Filter) buttonSelect Created from the Name dropdownSelect within last (days) from the Operator dropdownType 30 into the Value textbox.Click ApplyWe now get results back - items created in the last 30 days. Lets add our 2nd filterClick on the Add Filter button…

Charting case trends

June 12, 2014 Recently I was looking to put a report together that would track the total number of cases that are open on a daily basis, and graph that as a trend. This is fairly tricky to do with baseline data. It would be easier if I had a query that ran every night and simply recorded the total number of open cases at that point in time. All I need is the count, not the actual data. Then I would have a set of records that I could build a report with. My first thought was to create a simple script that would run the query, then set this up as a Scheduled Task to run nightly. Then I could store the results somewhere in the database. Then I realized that this all sounded familiar – this is Trend Tracker. Trends…

Quickly start a Google Hangout with a customer from a case

June 10, 2014 Google recently launched a Hangout start button that can be easily embedded within any app or website. From their post:That's why we recently launched a Hangout start button that can be embedded in any app or website. Whether you’re a sales rep working in a CRM app or an engineer in a project management tool, it only takes one click to launch a Hangout and your team will automatically be invited. You can even improve customer service with the ability to quickly launch into a video Hangout with a client to resolve an issue. (emphasis mine)This is pretty slick.There are a ton of remote support options out there, many that are expensive, and the integration with these can be pretty involved.I like Google hangouts because it’s simple and free. And Google has made it super easy to add a button…

Case Reviews

June 4, 2014 FT Works recently posted In praise of the support scrum. In it, she discusses: the joys of the support scrum (or huddle, or case review, as I usually call it) A case review is a regularly-scheduled, structured meeting between support engineers designed to share difficult cases and exchange troubleshooting suggestions.   Back when I was a Tech Support Engineer at The MathWorks  (where I first started using Clarify), we used to have these meetings. I forget exactly what we called them, but they were a great way to have a roundtable of senior engineers assisting us junior guys with difficult cases (i.e.  calculating the FFT of quaternions, dealing with endian conversions with floats on a VAX, etc.). Sometimes we were able to get answers, sometimes we handed off the cases to a senior engineer. I also liked them because I…

Integrating Clarify / Dovetail with Delighted to track Net Promoter Score

June 2, 2014 What is NPS (Net Promoter Score)? The Net Promoter Score, or NPS®, is based on the fundamental perspective that every company’s customers can be divided into three categories: Promoters, Passives, and Detractors. By asking one simple question — How likely is it that you would recommend [your company] to a friend or colleague? — you can track these groups and get a clear measure of your company’s performance through your customers’ eyes. Read more about NPS. What is Delighted? Delighted is a new application that makes it easy to gather feedback from your customers to determine your NPS. How does it work? When a case is closed, we’ll call the Delighted API. Delighted will then send an email to the customer. Customer clicks their answer (0-10) Answer is recorded in Delighted Customer can optionally enter some comments We can view…

Web testing using Canopy

March 26, 2014 With Dovetail Agent 5 and SelfService 2, we’re using Canopy for acceptance testing. We even ship our test suites with the app, so if you customize/extend the application, you can run the tests to be sure you didn’t break anything, and you can add in your own tests for any custom functionality. So far, Canopy has proved itself to be the nicest web testing framework we’ve used – it’s simple and stable. Scott Hansleman recently kicked out a nice blog post talking about canopy and the F# language. In it, he provides some links to playing with F# and a simple Canopy example. Great stuff! So check out the tutorials that Scott links to, and then for our Dovetail Agent and SelfService customers – be sure to download the latest versions of those apps and check out the tests in…

Case History enhancements in Dovetail Agent

March 4, 2014 We’ve done a lot of work recently to improve case (and subcase) history within Dovetail Agent 5. It feels much cleaner, is easier to read, and just feels pleasant. Plus there’s some cool new features. Here’s a few highlights.     Avatars Avatars for users, applications, and customers are shown. Notice that there is an avatar for Annie (who is a employee/user), Scott (who is a contact), and for Dovetail SelfService (an application). And the avatars are clickable links. If the avatar is for a user/employee, the link goes to the employee page. If it’s a contact, it goes to the contact page. Reverse Chronological Order Notice that the history shows the newest entries at the top, similar to many current social apps (facebook, twitter, etc.) More context - via Application When an entry happens via an application, we show…