REQUEST A DEMO

Tag: Dovetail Agent

Using Broadcasts to Share App Tips

December 8, 2015 BroadcastsOne of the features in Dovetail Agent is Broadcasts. I described them in a previous post.A broadcast is used to communicate a message to all users.Broadcasts appear in the user’s notification drawer – along with Notifier messages (such as from business rules).Notice the megaphone icon which helps identify it as a broadcast.Tip of the weekOne of the ways I’ve been using broadcasts here at Dovetail is to share application tips.I do it once a week, on Mondays, so my users get a Tip of the Week.Collection of TipsNotice the broadcast also includes a link to View Past Tips. This is a link to a solution within Agent that contains the collection of tips.So when I add a new tip, I create it as a broadcast, and update the solution with the new tip.SummaryThere you go – a tip about using…

Improving Log Emails

December 7, 2015 Even with today’s prevalence of web applications, a lot of service and support operation interactions are still done by email.With some recent updates to Dovetail Agent and Dovetail Rulemanager, these emails can step into modern times.A simple link in your outgoing emailIn a previous post on encouraging selfservice use,  I showed how to automatically include a link to the case within Selfservice in outgoing emails:Whenever we send an email out from a case using our Dovetail apps (Dovetail Agent, Dovetail Mobile), we include a footer in the email, like so:Notice the footer of that email:Check the status and update your case online at our SelfService site:http://support.company.com/cases/show/C12345HTML emails, including imagesMore recently,  I showed how users can send rich emails using Dovetail Agent 8, such as: Better togetherCombining these 2 ideas together means we can make our outgoing emails even nicer, with headers,…

What’s New in Dovetail Agent 8

November 13, 2015 This week we released Dovetail Agent version 8. Here’s a quick rundown of the major changes. Rich Text in Logs Agent now support rich text (using Markdown) on case/subcase logs (email, notes, research) and commitments. For example, creating a richly formatted Log Email:   And the received email looks like:   Convert Markdown to HTML for rendering rich text These rich text logs and images now render as expected in the Case History: And in the Preview Pane:   Rich text is also supported within Broadcasts:   within business rule notifications: and even within commitment messages:   Multiple count badges in tab headers Subcases tab on Case page - show open and total # of Subcases Part Request tab on Part Request Header page - show open and total # of Part Requests Contracts tab on Site page - show…

What’s New in Dovetail Agent 7

August 19, 2015 This week we released Dovetail Agent version 7. Here’s a quick rundown of the major changes.   Part Requests Logistics customers will be happy to know that we’ve brought Part Request functionality into our latest Dovetail Agent platform. This includes: Create and Edit Part Request Headers and Part Request Details Part Request Workflow operations: Accept,Assign,Dispatch,Forward,Reject,Yank,Close,Reopen Part Request Actions: Create New Part Request, Replicate Part Request Part Requests are available in My Work, Queries, Recent Items, and Search Part Request Header Part Request Detail   Batch Actions – Change Status and Log Notes Change Status and Log Note are now available as batch actions, making it easy to log a note or change the status of many cases or subcases at one time.     Range select On the query results grid (such as My Work), users can shift-click to select…

From Grunt to Gulp

Static image June 25, 2015 With the release of Agent 6, we hit a lot of milestones in our app. Agent became a true Single-page Application, we implemented a global Nav Menu that could be accessed anywhere, we upgraded the infrastructure to the latest version, and many more things. Along with this update, one goal we had was to rethink our frontend automation. At the time, we used a tool called Grunt. This is a node-based task runner. It allows you to define and run tasks that are often repeated in the development process such as compilations, optimizations, file copying, and others. Gulp is also a task automation tool but implemented differently with different objectives that we'll discuss later in this post. The Problem We saw that our gruntfile was getting out of control. It had grown to over 17 separate tasks with some configurations spanning…

What’s New in Dovetail Agent 6

June 24, 2015 This week we released Dovetail Agent version 6. Here’s a quick rundown of the major changes.   Faster all around We’ve improved performance throughout the application, both on the front and back-end. On the back-end, we’ve upgraded our major infrastructure components (including FUBU MVC, StructureMap, and Dovetail SDK), which improves the application startup time, as well as improves the time to process every request. We’ve also made improvements to the SQL generation module, which improves the performance of many database queries. In addition, queries are no longer executed on items without any relevant filters, which means fewer queries and better overall performance. On the front-end, Dovetail Agent is now a true SPA (Single Page Application), which means navigating through the application is much faster. There are less requests from the client to the server, and less data (scripts, templates, css,…

Debugging an IE 9 crash

June 23, 2015 Our Dovetail Agent app is supported on Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. Since Chrome and Firefox auto-update, users are typically on the most current version. IE is a different story, which pretty much all of us in the tech community are well aware. Continuing to support older versions of IE is more and more difficult. But, we are sensitive to the challenges of upgrading IE in enterprise environments. For Dovetail Agent, we support IE 9, 10, and 11. IE 9 has its challenges for sure. Many organizations have stopped supporting older versions of IE, including Google.  And Microsoft recently announced that they were dropping support of older versions of IE. Barrett Sonntag (one of our developers here at Dovetail) has written a post outlining a recent challenge we ran into where IE9 would crash when dragging, scrolling, and updating styles.…

Seek and ye shall find – the power of Search in Dovetail apps

June 12, 2015 A common fixture in our apps is the ubiquitous search box.  It’s available in Dovetail Agent, Dovetail Mobile, Dovetail Agent Lite, and Dovetail SelfService. It’s even available for the Clarify Classic Client.The heavy lifting for search is all handled on the back end by the Dovetail Seeker application. But the front-end is what users interact with, so we’ll cover that here.(BTW - If you’re looking for information on Dovetail Seeker, check out one of these posts, or review the docs.)On the surface, it’s pretty easy to use – put in some search terms and find what you’re looking for.  But there’s a lot more power available, and I wanted to touch on a few of these options.For the most part, I’ll cover search within Dovetail Agent, although much of this applies to all of our applications.What can we search for?Out…

File uploads in Dovetail Agent

June 9, 2015 Adding files to an item in Dovetail Agent is a pretty common activity. File attachments are supported on the following items: cases subcases solutions contracts site parts accounts We’ve made it super easy to add a file, which uploads it to the server and “attaches” it to the item. File attachments are stored in a common location on the server. Gone are the days of file attachments in the Clarify Classic Client where a file attachment resided on someone’s C drive, and couldn’t be accessed by anyone except the user who added the file attachment. Plus-One On each item, there’s a Files tab. Click on the tab, then click the + on the tab header. (From a development standpoint, we commonly refer to this as our plus-one pattern, where you click the plus sign to add one more related item)…

Closing a number of cases at once

June 5, 2015 Occasionally we get requests about closing a bunch of cases at once. Some people refer to it as a “mass case closing”, others use the term “batch case close”. Whatever you call it, it’s easy to do in Dovetail Agent. This request comes up when a bunch of test cases get created, or if a customer goes out of support, or a bad email loop creates cases by mistake, or a myriad of other reasons. Find the cases you want to close First step - create a query for the cases you want to close. I want open cases created in the last 365 days with the word “test” in the title. So, I created a query with 4 filters: Condition Starts with Open Item Type Is Equal To case Created within last (days) 365 Title Contains test Run the…