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Tag: customization

Rich Text in the Clarify Classic Client

December 18, 2008 Someone recently asked me if the Clarify Classic Client could handle rich text in multi-line text controls - i.e. can text be made bold, italics, use different fonts/colors, etc. Out of the box - no. Clarify handles plain text only. But, we can customize Clarify. One approach to this problem is to use an ActiveX control that supports rich text. As a proof-of-concept, I downloaded the SpellEditor RichTextBox RTF Control, and slapped it onto the Solution form. (There's a bunch of available controls out there. I'm not saying this is the best one, but it was sufficient to prove my concept.) I then added a bit of ClearBasic code: During form_load, take the description field contents from the solution's contextual object, and stuff it into the RTF text property of the control. During form_save, take the RTF text from the…

Dovetail Search for Clarify

November 18, 2008 Ever since we introduced Dovetail Seeker this summer, I was anxious to incorporate its capabilities with our applications. It is integrated within Dovetail Agent, Dovetail SelfService, and Dovetail Mobile Agent. Kevin also demonstrated how to incorporate it into your own applications (his particular example was integrating Seeker with an ASP.NET 2.0 web application). We've now integrated Seeker with the Clarify Classic Client, bringing the simple and ubiquitous search box into Clarify. Dovetail Search provides the User Interface (UI) for searching and displaying retrieved search results. Dovetail Search for Clarify makes a request to Seeker, and Seeker returns a set of search results. Dovetail Search displays these results in a simple, intuitive format. What can you search?You can search any data in your Clarify database. Out of the box, Dovetail Search is configured for searching cases, solutions, change requests (bugs), subcases, and part request details. Its easily configurable, so…

Consuming JSON in ClearBasic

October 22, 2008 Recently I had the need to consume JSON in ClearBasic. For example, I make a request to a web service, and the service returns a result set in JSON format. I want to display those results within Clarify. JSON JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format. JSON is a pretty popular data transfer format, especially for the web. Here's an example of a simple JSON object: { FirstName: Joe, LastName: SixPack, Programming Languages: [ClearBasic, Perl, Ruby] } A real-world JSON example I can make an HTTP request to a Google API to perform a web search. The result will be in a JSON format. For example, a search for "fcsdk powershell" can be made by using this URL: http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/web?v=1.0&q=fcsdk%20powershell The result will be this: {"responseData": {"results":[{"GsearchResultClass":"GwebSearch", "unescapedUrl":"http://blogs.dovetailsoftware.com/blogs/gsherman/archive/2007/04/25/using-the-fcsdk-in-powershell.aspx", "url":"http://blogs.dovetailsoftware.com/blogs/gsherman/archive/2007/04/25/using-the-fcsdk-in-powershell.aspx", "visibleUrl":"blogs.dovetailsoftware.com", "cacheUrl":"http://www.google.com/search?qu003dcache:u9RLwKjiIPYJ:blogs.dovetailsoftware.com", "title":"Gary Sherman : Using the u003cbu003efcSDKu003c/bu003e in u003cbu003ePowerShellu003c/bu003e",…

Keyboard Shortcuts for Dovetail Mobile Agent

October 7, 2008 In a past post, I discussed how to use GreaseMonkey to modify a web application, particularly, Dovetail Mobile Agent. In my last post, I linked to a GreaseMonkey script that added keyboard shortcuts to Basecamp. Now let's combine the two together. Access Keys for Mobile Clients Keep in mind that Dovetail Mobile Agent already has Access Keys (shortcuts) that are geared for mobile devices. The access keys are numbers. This works well on a mobile device, but it doesn't make as much sense for non-mobile devices. Notice in the image below that each link has a numeric access key. In a previous post, I showed you how to use Stylish to restyle the app.  One of the styling changes I made was to hide the numeric access keys: .access-key-label{    display:none; } This hid the mobile-centric numeric access keys. Keyboard…

Clarify Additional Features Forms

October 3, 2008 I recently responded to a  question about adding a Save button to the CR (Change Request) form in Clarify. Dusting off my Clarify knowledge, I gave some details about how to simply copy the Save button from the Additional Features form. I'm sure not everyone knows about these forms. We wrote about this years ago, in one of our newsletters, but I figured it couldn't hurt to share it again here. Additional Features Forms   There are three forms in the Clarify Classic Client that are never displayed in a Clarify client session, but which are extremely valuable. Clarify has placed a variety of controls on these controls that can be copy and pasted directly on to specific forms in Clarify, and they will work for you automatically.   There are two forms provided for ClearSupport, and one provided for…

Customizing Seeker: Indexing and Searching Custom Objects

August 15, 2008 In previous posts, we've covered the basics of Seeker, along with searching custom attributes of an object (such as case.x_notes).Continuing on, lets look at how to index and search custom objects.In our environment, we keep track of the software license keys that we send to our customers, and we do this in our Dovetail system.This is an entirely custom object, so this will make a great example.The License Key TableUsing BOLT, we can quickly see what this table looks like:We need to know the database table information so we can modify the documentSpecifications.xml file. Modify the documentSpecifications.xml fileSeek.exe is the application that performs the actual indexing. The documentSpecifications.xml is the configuration file that seek.exe uses so that it knows what to index.The documentSpecifications.xml file consists of many dovetailDocumentSpecifications. For example, there is a specification for case, one for subcase, one for…

Customizing Seeker: Searching custom data

July 30, 2008 In a previous post, I covered some details on Seeker - our full-text search engine, along with its integration with applications, such as Dovetail Agent. One of the other things I really like about Seeker is its extensibility. Via configuration, Seeker can easily be extended to search additional (including custom) fields (such as a custom field on the case or solution). Here we'll cover that scenario. Modify the documentSpecifications.xml file Seek.exe is the application that performs the actual indexing. The documentSpecifications.xml is the configuration file that seek.exe uses so that it knows what to index. The documentSpecifications.xml file consists of many dovetailDocumentSpecifications. For example, there is a specification for case, one for subcase, one for solution, etc. The contents section determines what columns are searched. For example, the baseline contents for the case object includes id_number, title, and case_history: <contents>…

Search your Clarify/Dovetail data

July 28, 2008 Dovetail Seeker is our search engine for Clarify/Dovetail. One of the things I really like about Seeker is that its easy to take advantage of its search results from different applications. Because Seeker is a web service, its relatively easy to have applications use this search service. For example, we've added Search capabilities to Dovetail Agent and to Dovetail SelfService. We've also added Search to our external website, and Search can also be added to the Clarify Classic Client.  Many applications can use the same instance of Seeker for searching:     Request/Response Each of these applications simply make an HTTP request to Dovetail Seeker, and the results are returned in a JSON format. JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format that is easy for humans to read and write, and also easy for machines to parse and…

A few UI Editor Tips and Tricks

July 24, 2008 Kevin walked past my laptop the other day and noticed an ugly looking hot-dog-inspired-colored window, and asked -what the hell is that?   This is what it was:   Ugly? Absolutely. Useful? I think so. I thought it deserved some explanation, so here goes. Colors   I purposely use the bright colors to distinguish the different elements, along with the exact space each element takes up, and how each element lines up. This is especially helpful for labels.   This is purely to assist with the design of the form in Clarify's User Interface Editor. These colors are not displayed at runtime in the Clarify Client.   For example, here's the same form, with the same controls, but without the colors. Notice that its hard to tell what's what, and how much space each control takes up.   With everything colored, I can…

When Clarify grids go bad

July 18, 2008 For the most part, Clarify is pretty easy to customize. Occasionally, you run into Clarify forms that just don't behave as you would expect. In particular, the "old" Clarify forms, that were all written in C, long before ClearBasic was considered - those can be problematic. ClearLogistics forms are also typically problematic - the initial ClearLogistics development team seemed to have their own way of doing things back then.   We recently assisted a customer with such an issue, and I'm sharing it here so hopefully it may help others in a similar situation. Customizing the "Select Inventory Parts" form   The requirement at hand was to exclude inventory parts from a certain inventory location when selecting inventory parts - specifically, on Form 519 (Select Inventory Parts).   Here's the form, showing all inventory parts:   Lets say that we…