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Tag: Gary Sherman

fcSDK Cache files: sometimes more trouble then they're worth

July 30, 2007 One of the features of the fcSDK is its ability to cache frequently-used, rarely-changed data, such as the schema meta-data (ADP tables),  lists (Application Lists, Status codes, User-defined lists), geography data (states, countries, time_zones, currencies), configuration items, and strings. When the fcSDK starts up, it reads all of this data from the database and saves it into memory. In addition, it writes out the data to cache files. The next time the fcSDK starts up, if there are cache files present, it loads the data from the cache files, as opposed to having to go to the database. This improves the performance of the loading of the cache data, as reading from a local file is quicker than loading from a remote database. However, these cache files can often cause trouble. If a piece of cache data is changed in…

A simple blog comment turns around a customer experience

July 23, 2007 I've blogged in the past about turning blog entries into customer experiences. Here's a recent real-world example of that. Adam Esterline reviewed Watir as part of a web application testing comparison.  In his own words, "I did not give Watir very high marks." Bret Pettichord, our Test Architect here at Dovetail, and a core contributor to the open-source Watir project, left a comment on Adam's blog, simply asking for more info about Adam's experience using Watir. Bret's comment was a pretty simple one, but it engaged Adam. Enough so to prompt Adam to revisit Watir, and try again, this time with much better results. Even more so, it was enough to get Adam to post a follow-up praising Bret: This is great customer service. Bret saw that our team was having problems and responded thoughtfully. There's no fancy CRM software involved…

Seagate cares about the customer experience, and it shows

July 19, 2007 Check out this post on How Seagate learned to package like Apple. Not only is the packaging well done, but the "technical" manual (that doesn't come across as technical) is as well. They obviously thought about the entire customer experience, from a potential customer picking up the box in a store, to the unpacking of the contents, to the manual that guides one through the setup, and finally to its use. Someone obviously kept the customer experience question front and center at all times: How does it make the customer feel, at every step along the way? Nicely done.   Technorati Tags: design, customer experience

Modifying a case you don't own

July 13, 2007 Clarify employs a strict ownership paradigm with its application, meaning that only the owner of a workflow object can make a critical change to it. This ownership paradigm was baked into the product, and difficult to modify. For example, anyone can add notes to a case, but only the owner can change the status. What's a critical change? Let's take case as the object in question, and see what Clarify considers critical. Critical changes: Change any attributes of the case (title, priority, severity, etc.) Change the status Perform a workflow action (Assign, Dispatch) Close the Case Change the contact, product, or contract for the case Relate the case to a solution Non-Critical changes: Log Notes Log Email Log Phone Call Log Research However, organizations don't always want to follow these imposed rules. For example, it's not that uncommon to have a…

My nomination for worst variable name ever: else_bool

While pair-programming this week, Kevin and I ran into this: Dim else_bool As Boolean <snip> else_bool = Convert.ToInt32(pv2_rec("part_good_qty").NetValue) > 0 else_bool! Whiskey Tango Foxtrot! Um, how about isGoodQuantityAvailable? And yes, since we refactor mercilessly, we changed it.  Our code base is better today than it was yesterday.

RuleManager version 1.1 released

July 9, 2007 Dovetail RuleManager 1.1 is now officially available. My previous post has details of what's new in this release. RuleManager Documentation is available online. To obtain this release, create a request using Dovetail SelfService, or send us an email.

Upcoming product release: Dovetail RuleManager 1.1

July 5, 2007 We're currently working on version 1.1 of RuleManager. This version was fueled by customer requests, and should be available very soon.   Here's what's coming in version 1.1: RuleManager can now include attachments for emails initiated via a LogEmail action, which are typically made from within fcClient or the Clarify Client. The application taking that action, such as fcClient or the Clarify Client, is responsible for relating the LogEmail (table_email_log) to the attachment(s) (table_doc_inst). Because RuleManager will only attach files that it has access to, we recommend that the path to the attachment is a UNC path such as "\serverpathfile.ext". If RuleManager cannot access an attachment, the email will still be sent without the attachment. RuleManager will log an error when this situation occurs.The working directory of RuleManager is now the directory where RuleManager is installed. This is relevant when…

less-code-but-miles-of-tangled-executable-XML-and-designer-puke

June 25, 2007 Chad finally breaks his 2007 blogging silence with Software is hard, handle with care. He mimics my earlier sentiments: just is a dirty word I love this line: In fact, I seem to be writing more code, but it's much BETTER and REUSABLE code and I've found that BETTER and REUSABLE are infinitely more valuable than less-code-but-miles-of-tangled-executable-XML-and-designer-puke. Cool post Chad; would love to see you post more!

Who's the concierge at your company?

June 19, 2007 The Customers Rock! blog points us to Chad, the web concierge at Element Fusion (formerly www.speaklight.com/your-web-concierge).  From the Customers Rock! blog: Chad’s job as concierge is to hand-hold the customers as they take their first steps with Light and make the who experience quick and easy.  He gives out his direct line or clients can email him directly as well in order to contact him with questions about the first 2-3 sites they bring on board.  What I found the most interesting about Chad (who is a real person, by the way - that’s his picture up above!) is that he is a high-level director of IT at the company, not a low-level employee.  Being a true concierge, as in a hotel, is a part of Chad’s job.  Tim explained to me that they felt it was important to show the…

Should log_notes update the last modified timestamp on the case?

June 13, 2007 On most workflow objects in Clarify, such as case, subcase, etc. there is a column which indicates the last modified date.  For example, on table_case, there is a modify_stmp column. In older versions of Clarify (including up to version 11.5), if you perform a log action (such as log notes), that timestamp is not updated. In later versions (such as 12.5), that timestamp is updated. The high level APIs in our fcSDK (such as log_case_note, log_case_phone, log_subcase_note, etc.) mimic the Clarify functionality. But, because they've been around so long, they mimic "older" versions of Clarify. So, our log* APIs do not update the last modified timestamp on a case. So, the question is: should our log APIs update the last modified timestamp? I could, but I would prefer not to, add version conditional logic, such as this: if (CLARIFY_SCHEMA_VER >= 59){…