Tag: query

Customizing Dovetail Agent

November 18, 2016 Adding customizations in Dovetail Agent, as of version 13, incorporates numerous changes that make the application easier to customize and extend.Stepping through a simple example will demonstrate how those changes make it easy to add a customization. OverviewThis example shows a customization to enhance the console, adding some eye-catching color for Cases that have a severity level that needs attention. If a Case has a Medium severity, the row should be pink, orange for a High severity Case, and if a Case severity is Urgent, then make the row red.By default, all rows in the console have a white background, so adding some colors will make those cases stand out. Cases with severity levels below Medium will still have the white background. RoadmapTo accomplish this customization, the Cases with raised severity shown in the Case grid on the console need to have…

How To Query Case Activities in Dovetail Agent

November 14, 2016 I recently posted about how to Query Anything with Dovetail Agent. Specifically I showed how to setup a custom query for part inventory.In this post, we’ll look at creating a specialized flavor of a existing query.We have built-in query capabilities for work items (including cases), but instead, lets walk-through an example of allowing for querying on case activities.For example, show me how many cases were dispatched to the benefits queue in the last 90 days.For case activities, we’ll need to query the activity log (table_act_entry). In general, I discourage querying against this table using your online production database, as it’s typically the biggest table in the database, and queries against this table can adversely affect performance for everyone using the system. But, depending on your particular use case, your database, database size, database tuning, etc – this may be ok.You…

Query Anything with Dovetail Agent

November 11, 2016 In this post, we’ll look at how to create new ad-hoc queries to query anything in your system, purely via configuration.For those that have been around the Clarify/Dovetail/First Choice space for a while, you might remember that we used to have an add-on product for the Clarify Client named Query Anything. So yes, this post title is a nod to that. This is a continuation of the series on queries within Dovetail Agent, so it might be useful to first review the previous posts:An overview of configuring queries in Dovetail AgentHow to override the baseline queries Out of the box, Dovetail Agent allows for ad-hoc queries on:AccountsContactsContractsEmployeesSite PartsSitesThese are all great – but its common that we want to query on other objects – other baseline Clarify objects, or even custom objects.Lets walk through an example of how to do this. Inventory QueryFor this…

Customizing baseline queries in Dovetail Agent

November 10, 2016 In my last post, I covered the Query Filter Config files, and how they’re used to define a query.Now, lets have a look at how we can override the baseline queries, customizing them for your specific implementation. Customizing a filter config doesn't mean you have to write rewrite the existing ones. You can write a config file just describing the customizations you need.We call these Filter Overrides.Using filter overrides, we can:remove a Columnremove a Facetremove a Fieldadd a Facetadd a Fieldadd a Columnadd a Join Example Filter OverrideThis is an example of a custom filter override file.We’ll override the Cases query, which is part of My Work, and adhoc queries on Work Items.<filter overrides="Cases">  <removeFacet key="priority" /> <removeColumn key="priority" /> <!-- Remove the created column. We'll…

Configurable and Customizable Queries in Dovetail Agent

November 8, 2016 I’ve talked in the past about the power of queries within Dovetail Agent and how end users can build and use them.In this post, I’ll dive a bit deeper into how queries are configured, and how they can be configured and customized. Query ConfigurationQueries within the app are driven by filter config files. This includes:Adhoc Queries available from the top-level Query menu, including:Work Items (Case/Subcase/Solution/Change Request/Part Request)Accounts, Contacts, Contracts, Employees, Site Parts, SitesCustom queriesTabs that contain filterable queries (such as the Contacts tab on the Site page) Filter Config FilesFilter Config Files are XML files that define:what tables/views are being queriedjoinswhat filters (facets) are available for the user to filter the query bywhat non-facet fields are queried for use in output datawhat output data is returned to the front-end of the application (columns)required privilege to make the entry available in the top-level…

Pro Tip: Query Ordering in Dovetail Agent

August 4, 2016 When viewing queries in Dovetail Agent, they’re ordered alphabetically. I was recently asked if there was a way to change the ordering. For example, I may have a certain query that I always want to be at the top of the list. Nope, sorry. They’re alphabetical. But, you can use a few tricks to get the ordering you want. A-Z Purely based on letters, if we want something at the top of the list, we could have its name being with “a”, or prefix it with “aaa” . Similar for “zzz” Reminds me of those businesses that would name their companies so that they would be first in the phone book: I’m not a big fan of this approach, but it does work. But we can do better. 0-9 Of course, we can also use numbers,…

Smarter Pickers

February 24, 2015 Throughout our application, we use “pickers” for selecting items. For example, we use a picker for queues when dispatching a case: a picker for contacts when creating a case: and a picker for the installed part on a case: For a small list of items (lets say < 100), such as a list of queues, we’ll just show the user all of the available items straight-away. The user can scroll to see them all, or start typing and the list will be filtered in place. When there are a large number of items, such as a list of contacts when creating a case, which can be thousands, tens of thousands, or even millions, we make the user type to start the search process. There’s no way we could retrieve millions of contacts from the database and show them to the…