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Tag: customization

jQuery = Simplification

July 11, 2008 I came across this code today, and it took me a second to figure out what it was doing: strSortOrder = document.getElementById("ad").options[document.getElementById("ad").selectedIndex].value; To break it down, it locates a Select control on the page (FindElementById), finds the element again and gets its selected value's index (selectedIndex), and sets the variable to the value of the option at the specified index (options[index].value). There is a jQuery plugin that really simplifies this process. Using jquery.selectboxes.js, the code now is as simple as this: strSortOrder = $("#ad").selectedValues(); This code now does the same thing, but it is also easy to read, and understand. It shortened from 86 characters to 26, and now requires no explanation. There are many different cases where jQuery can simplify the code.

App.ShowSolution in ClearBasic

July 7, 2008 I'm sure most of the ClearBasic brainiacs already know this (and I may have at one point), but the parameter to App.ShowSolution is a record of type "workaround", not a record of type "probdesc". I probably knew this at one time, but its been a long time since I've done ClearBasic coding. I'm blogging this so that I can find it again in the future, with Google's help, of course.   If you call App.ShowSolution with a probdesc record, you get this ever-so-helpful pile of joy: Cannot map specific relation (type 1 with relation -3). Uh, yeah. Thanks. No, really. That was a helpful message. I'm in awe of your ability to render something so utterly useless. Freakin' programmers.   Working code example: Sub ShowObject(objectType As String, idNumber As String)     If objectType = "solution" Then objectType = "probdesc"    …

Manage Queue Membership: Making It Easier

July 1, 2008  Dovetail Software, Inc. recently recently received a request from one of our customers to make Queue Membership Management easier and more efficient to use. The screen image to the left shows the Manage Queues form in Dovetail Admin, Version 2.5. When a queue is selected at the top of the form, its current members and supervisors are displayed at the bottom right of the Membership tab.     Adding or changing members and supervisors was done one by one, and with only the login name for each user to determine the identity of each user. The login names are unique, but it can be hard to tell users apart based on login name alone. The new requested functionality to make queue management easier includes adding the first and last name for each user, and allowing multiple users to be added or removed…

Manage Queue Membership: Behind the User Interface

The first step in making the changes was to add the first and last names to each of the membership grids. This simply required changing the data source for the user information from the user table to the empl_user view in both of the user grid pages. The grid_queue_mem.asp and grid_queue_mem2.asp pages each retrieve a list of records from the database, and build a table of user information from the results.   Adding multi-select capability required much more change, so it was time to look for a better way to get the job done. This is where jQuery enters the picture. There is an excellent jQuery plugin available for grids, called jqGrid. There is a lot of capability available, and it allows us to simplify the code.   In the previous version of the form shown above, there is an…

Highlighting Priority Cases

June 30, 2008 A common customization within Clarify is to highlight priority cases in a wipBin or queue by setting their color. For example, make High Priority cases really stand out by coloring them red. Clarify Classic Client The ClearBasic Customization Guide has a couple of examples on how to do this with the Clarify Classic Client. However, the customization was commonly applied to the Queue and wipBin forms - not the console. As a reminder: to view the wipBin form, simply double-click a wipBin from the list in the left side of the console. Similarly, for the Queue form. However, since about Clarify version 4, no one typically used these forms - the new console form was what was used. However, the console form can't be customized. I did a search on this to confirm my memory, and found my own post…

A handful of presentations on JavaScript and jQuery

June 24, 2008 John Resig (creator of jQuery) recently posted a bunch of his presentations online, focused on JavaScript and jQuery. Check 'em out. I'm fast becoming a huge fan of jQuery, and we're now using it a lot more within Dovetail Agent. Not only is the library itself cool - but the plethora of available plugins really make it rock.

Encode URLs with ClearBasic

June 23, 2008 At Dovetail one of the things we sell is Clarify Helpdesk support. This means that customers having problems with Clarify Client can get support when they run into issues. We had an interesting case recently that I thought would be good to share with the community.   Under the hood Clarify Client uses a variant of Visual Basic called ClearBasic which makes the behavior of their windows application customizable via scriptability. Using ClearBasic, Clarify developers can modify the script used behind any of the forms in the Clarify Client application. We have a customer that is integrating one of their Clarify Client forms with another enterprise application using HTTP GET Requests. They ran into a problem with GET requests getting truncated when special characters were present in the request URL. When constructing HTTP GET requests parameters you should UrlEncode the value of each parameter.…

Web Developers: Make sure you're displaying script errors

May 14, 2008 By default, Internet Explorer doesn't display script errors. Most of the time this is fine, but when developing web applications, you want to be aware of any script errors. For example, lets say you have this line of JavaScript: var foo = document.getElementByid('bar').value; Notice that the "i" in getElementByid is lowercase, which isn't valid. By default, IE won't display an error. The only indication that an error occurred will be an icon in the status bar (if you even have the status bar displayed, which you may not): Double-clicking the icon will give you more details: When I'm developing web apps, I want to know when there's an error, so I configure IE to always display errors. IE - Tools - Internet Options - Advanced Tab Make sure the Display a notification about every script error option is checked. In…

Notify the case owner when someone else logs a note to their case

May 7, 2008 In a previous post, we learned how to use a variable on either side of a business rule condition. Now, we'll create a business rule that uses this type of condition.User StoryWe'll start with a story:As a case owner, I want to be notified when someone else logs a note to my case, so that I can be kept informed of any activity on my cases.The business ruleHere's the business rule which satisfies the user story.Object Type: Case Rule Name/Description: Notify the owner when someone else logs a note to their case Start Events: Log Note Cancel Events: None Conditions: Logger != [Current Owner] Action Title: Notify  Owner Who to Notify: [Current Owner] Start Action: 0 minutes From: Event Creation Using: Elapsed Time Repeat : Never Message:RE: A note was logged to [Object Type] [Object ID] by [Logger]A note was…