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Tag: rulemanager

Understanding Business Calendars and Holidays

January 4, 2017 When talking about calendars, notifications, and SLAs – questions around calendars and holidays often arise.So lets explain how they work within Dovetail apps.     Business CalendarsLets start with Business Calendars. They define the work hours.For example I may have a business calendar named “M-F 9-5” with the following work hours:Monday 9:00 AM – Monday 5:00 PMTuesday 9:00 AM – Tuesday 5:00 PMWednesday 9:00 AM – Wednesday 5:00 PMThursday 9:00 AM – Thursday 5:00 PMFriday 9:00 AM – Friday 5:00 PMPretty simple.Business Calendars can be setup using Dovetail Admin. HolidaysNow lets setup the Holidays.Using Dovetail Agent, navigate to the Admin page, and click on the Holidays icon: This takes us to the Manage Holidays page, where we can create, edit, and delete holidays.  Clicking the green plus icon allows us to create a new holiday We can give the holiday a name, a start…

What’s New in Dovetail Agent 14

January 3, 2017 We recently released Dovetail Agent version 14. Here’s a run-down of the highlights.   User-Configurable home pageUsers can now set their home page to be any page within the app - such as a queue or a query.For example, perhaps you’re a manager who doesn’t work cases. In this case, you may wish your home page to be My Workgroup's Open Items or one of your custom queries.By default, Home is the same as My Work.To set your home page, use the s+h keyboard shortcut while you’re on any page in the app. Or set it on the User Preferences page.Clicking the Home icon (or using the g+h keyboard shortcut) will take you home.Clicking the My Work icon (or using the g+w keyboard shortcut) will take you to My Work.From the User Preferences page, you can also set or reset your…

How to Automate a Workflow Process by Combining function based Rule Properties and the SDK Toolkit extension

December 21, 2016 When working with parent-child cases, a common workflow is to close the parent case when all the child cases have been closed.We can easily automate this workflow using Dovetail tools and applications. Business RuleHere’s the rule that I want to create:When the last child case is closed, close the parent case.In order for this rule to function, I need to know when the last child case is closed.I can do that by looking at the number of open child cases on the parent case. When this number is equal to zero, I know that all of the children have been closed.But, out of the box, this number is not an available property.But I can easily create my own, using the function-based rule property functionality.  NumberOfOpenChildCasesOnParent Rule PropertyFollowing the examples, I can create my own function-based rule property.Given the child case objid, I…

Introducing Custom Function-based Rule Properties

December 20, 2016   Rule Properties Rule properties are used in a number of places throughout the Dovetail suite, including: Business Rule Conditions Business Rule Action Messages Canned Response Variables Task Manager Properties Email Log Templates Traditionally, a rule property would traverse a path through the schema, starting from the base object, and ending at a column. For example, the Contact First Name property for a case would use the path case_reporter2contact:first_name. However, there are instances where a path cannot be traversed, or where a calculation needs to be made.   Counts For example, you may wish to fire a business rule only if all of the subcases on a case have been closed. So your two business rule conditions would be: Number of Subcases is greater than zero Number of Open Subcases is equal to zero Or, you may wish to fire…

Demystifying the focus_obj2act_entry relation

December 5, 2016 I’ve had multiple people inquire lately about the focus_obj2act_entry relation.It’s definitely a bit of a magic relation, and can be confusing, so I figured it was time to blog about it. Business rule properties allow you to define a value that is determined by traversing through the schema starting from a particular object.For example, the Site Name property for a Case has a path of case_reporter2site:name. So when this rule property gets resolved, the property evaluator knows how to turn that schema path into actual SQL, such as:select name from table_case, table_site where case_reporter2site = table_site.objid and table_case.objid = {The Objid of the Case in Context}Pretty straightforward. focus_obj2act_entry propertiesWhen looking at existing business rule properties, you may notice that some of them start with the relation focus_obj2act_entry.For example, the Logger property uses focus_obj2act_entry:act_entry2user:login_name Notice the "focus_obj2act_entry" part of the path. If you look…

Replacing custom scripts with the SDK Toolkit extension

September 19, 2016 Recently, I talked about the new SDK Toolkit Extension in Dovetail Carrier, which allows for executing methods within the Dovetail SDK Toolkits, without writing any code. Once that was released, I was able to remove some custom scripts from our own production environment, and replaced them with this new SDK Toolkit extension.   Change Status This is the business rule that we has in place: Object Type Case Rule Name/Description When a customer logs a note via SelfService, change the case status to Customer Update Start Events Log Note Cancel Event None Conditions Logger = SelfService Action Title Change Status Create Activity Log Entry? true (checked) Who to Notify no one (leave empty) Start Action 0 minutes From Event Creation Using Elapsed Time Repeat    Never Message Type Command Line Message C:\Dovetail\custom\RuleManagerActions\ChgStatus\ChangeCaseStatus.bat [Object ID] 'Customer Status changed automatically due to action…

SLA Calculations using Dovetail Carrier

August 9, 2016 I was recently working on a project that wanted to track SLAs, but the specific SLA rules were more complex than could be handled just using business rules.  But, the logic would be pretty straightforward to enforce via code. So we came up with a solution that used a combination of business rules and a custom Dovetail Carrier extension.  In this post, I’ll walk through how we accomplished this. There’s a lot of information here, so grab a cup of coffee (or perhaps a glass of scotch), settle in, and lets get to it. Photo by @ederpozo   SLAs Over the past 20+ years of working in the Support/CRM space, I’ve worked with a number of organizations that want to enforce SLAs (service level agreements) in their Support app. Example SLAs All cases must be responded to within 2 business…

Introducing the SDK Toolkit extension in Dovetail Carrier

August 2, 2016 We recently released an updated version of Dovetail Carrier, and this version includes a new SDK Toolkit Extension. I’m super excited about this new extension – so lets get into the details. But first, a quick refresher on Dovetail Carrier.   What is Dovetail Carrier? Carrier is a flexible and customizable message handling framework for your Dovetail or Clarify CRM application. It allows the automation of virtually any internal CRM processes associated with communicating with external systems. Carrier uses messaging, a method of communication between software components or applications that enables distributed communication that is loosely coupled, to enable organizations to establish efficient dataflow between their systems.   Extensions The Carrier framework is designed to support extensions to its baseline capabilities, for implementing solutions to your organization's business needs. Extensions shipped by Dovetail have been designed to be customizable and…

Pro Tip: Better Rule Property Names

July 7, 2016 Rule properties are used mainly within business rules. They’re used within business rule conditions, and also in business rule messages. We also use them as part of Dovetail Task Manager, and within Canned Responses. Out of the box, Clarify defines properties for Object ID and for Database ID.   Object ID Looking at the Object ID properties, we see: Looking at the path_name for each of these, notice that most of them map to the id_number field, but some map to the objid field. Confusing. For Case and Subcase, Object ID means the id_number. But for Part Requests, it means the objid. Ugh.   Database ID Looking at the Database ID properties, we see: Notice that they all map to the objid field.   So between Object ID and Database ID, what we have is a mix of objid and…