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Tag: Dovetail Agent

More Case History enhancements in Dovetail Agent

February 17, 2015 Last spring I posted about some of the enhancements we’ve made to the case history in Dovetail Agent. Over the last few releases, we’ve also made more improvements that we think make it even better.  Images File attachments that are images are now shown inline. They’re constrained to a maximum size, to maintain readability. Clicking on an image opens it in a lightbox, and in a larger format when necessary. Example: Ordering In my previous post, I mentioned that we displayed the case history in reverse chronological order – with the newest entries at the top, similar to many current social apps (facebook, twitter, etc.). Based on customer feedback, we added an additional option here. Users can now choose the order – either chronological or reverse chronological. And the user’s preference is automatically remembered. This gives each user more control…

Solutions go from boring to kick-ass

February 12, 2015 One of the common complaints with knowledgebase articles (solutions) in Clarify was the fact that they are plain text – even on the web. We’ve recently enhanced solutions so that they are much more robust and useful. Solutions can now contain rich text, images, and videos. Apps This functionality is supported within Dovetail Agent and in Dovetail SelfService. Dovetail Agent: Dovetail SelfService: Examples Here’s a few examples of solutions from our knowledgebase: https://support.dovetailsoftware.com/selfservice/solutions/show/700 https://support.dovetailsoftware.com/selfservice/solutions/show/638 https://support.dovetailsoftware.com/selfservice/solutions/show/721 Rich Text Solutions now support rich text, including: Headers (heading 1 –> heading 6) Italic Bold Superscript Subscript Highlighted text Strikethrough Unordered Lists Ordered Lists HTML links Blockquotes Inline code Task lists Tables Code blocks, including syntax highlighting Typographic replacements – such as © Images As nice as text is, sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, especially in a knowledgebase context. So solutions…

Broadcasts in Dovetail Agent

February 5, 2015 One of the newer features in Dovetail Agent is broadcasts. 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. Examples What are a few examples of where you might use broadcasts? The system will be going down tonight at 5:00 PM for maintenance. If a customer calls about the special holiday promotion, here's what you need to know. This app has been updated to a new version. Outgoing shipments will be delayed because of the snow storm. Or whatever other message you want to send to your users. Properties Broadcast messages are made up of: Title - a brief summary of the message, similar to an email subject Message body…

Notifications in Dovetail Agent

February 2, 2015 When a business rule fires, most of the time the result is a notification to one or more users. There's a few common ways a user can get notified - email, pager, sms/text messages, and the "notifier". Notifier means that the user gets a notification within the application itself. In the Clarify Classic Client, there is a Notifier form (Desktop - Notifier) where messages are displayed. Notify Server On the back end, Clarify uses  a Notifier service/daemon, commonly referred to as the Notify Server. The Clarify Client communicates with the Notifier service using a Windows socket connection. This is notoriously buggy. It wouldn't always connect, the connection would drop, messages would get lost, etc. Often, the Notifier service would think it delivered a message to the client, and then delete the message from the database. If it didn't actually get…

Commitment Templates

January 28, 2015 In our last episode, we looked at Commitments in Dovetail Agent. When a commitment expires, or is about to expire, the system will notify the user. Rulemanager is what sends out the notification, and the content of the notification message is defined by the commitment templates. Lets take a look at these templates, and see how we can make them better. Templates There are two templates in the system that are used for commitments: Commitment and Warning. These are stored in table_com_tmplte. With the commitment enhancements that we’ve made to Dovetail Agent, we can also enhance the commitment templates to provide more information and context. Commitment Template Here’s the commitment template we provide with Dovetail Agent.  They’re simply DAT files that you import using dataex or DIET. The interesting part of the template is really the action field: RE: Commitment…

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…

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…

What’s New in Dovetail Agent 5.6

August 13, 2014 This week we released Dovetail Agent 5.6. Here’s a summary of what’s new in this version. Queries With this release, we've really amped up the querying functionality.  I’ll have another post soon that covers querying in more detail, but here’s a quick summary: A new Queries page, allowing user to easily access My Queries, Subscriptions, and Shared Queries Easily create a new query from the Queries page Queries can now be shared to another user, to a workgroup, or to everyone Shared queries can be subscribed to, which indicates that it's a query that you're interested in. These are queries that you may run occasionally, but aren't quite to the level of a favorite. Queries can now be starred/favorited. Favorite queries are queries that you run frequently, or want easily accessible. These show up in the left sidebar under the…

Watching cases in Dovetail – 2014 edition

August 4, 2014 A couple of years ago I posted about watching cases in Clarify / Dovetail. The idea is still a good one, and I’ve recently combined the idea of watching a case with the new tagging functionality that’s available in Dovetail Agent 5. Overview It’s not uncommon that we want to keep up with what’s going on with certain cases – specifically cases that are being worked by others. For example, a high priority case for a new customer may have been recently created, and even though its being worked by someone else, I still want to keep abreast of what’s happening with it. Or perhaps the customer I’m going to visit next week has a case open that I want to stay in the loop on. Or I want to follow how one of my guys is dealing with a…