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Tag: rulemanager

Task Manager Comparison: Dovetail vs. Clarify

June 20, 2016 I’ve received a few questions asking how Dovetail Task Manager compares to Clarify Task Manager. So let's cover that here.First, a quick refresher on what Task Manager is. Task Manager OverviewTask Manager is an optional module that allows actions to occur automatically when a task set is selected from a case.The most common action is creating a subcase.For example, when the New Employee Task Set is run:Create a General subcase for setting up the employee's network account and dispatch to the Network queue.Create an Administrative subcase for ordering business cards and assign to a specific employee.Create a General subcase for creating the user's account in the CRM system, and dispatch to a queue based on auto-destination rules.Dovetail Agent can work with either Clarify Task Manager or Dovetail Task Manager. High level comparison ClarifyDovetailTask evaluationTasks are evaluated within the Clarify Classic Client itself, or…

Publish a message to Dovetail Carrier to invoke a custom action

June 15, 2016 In this post, I’ll cover calling a custom action within Dovetail Carrier by pushing a message directly onto Carrier’s queue, without using Rulemanager (or Task Manager). To recap how we got here: Dovetail Task Manager Overview – What it is, how it works, etc. Creating custom tasks for Dovetail Task Manager – How to create a custom task action, namely a Get Stock Quote action Invoking custom actions in Dovetail Carrier without using Task Manager – How to call a custom action using Rulemanager to publish a message to Carrier Now, lets look at calling a custom action within Carrier by pushing a message onto Carrier’s queue, without using Rulemanager. We’ll use the same action created in the previous post – namely GetStockQuote.   Custom executable For this example, we’re creating a custom executable – publish.exe This exe will simply…

Invoking custom actions in Dovetail Carrier without using Task Manager

June 13, 2016 In my last post, I demonstrated how to create a custom action for Dovetail Task Manager – namely a GetStockQuote action.Now, let's see how we can invoke a custom action without using Task Manager at all.We’ll invoke the same GetStockQuote code within Carrier, but, this has nothing to do with Task Manager. It’s simply a way to get Carrier to execute some custom code.To invoke it, we’ll create a business rule, and have Rulemanager send this message into Carrier. (Recall that Dovetail Rulemanager version 2.0 added Carrier Message as a business rule action message type) ProcessHere’s the overall process:  A New Carrier Message TypeOut of the box, Dovetail Task Manager fires a business rule with an action of Carrier Message.The business rule action message content looks like:type=RunTaskSet caseId=12345 taskSetName=Do Something Cool Task Set  Rulemanager turns this into an actual message, and sends…

Dovetail Task Manager Introduction

June 6, 2016 Dovetail Task Manager is an optional module that allows actions to occur automatically when a task set is selected from a case.The most common action is creating a subcase. For example, when the New Employee Task Set is run: Create a General subcase for setting up the employee's network account and dispatch to the Network queue. Create an Administrative subcase for ordering business cards and assign to a specific employee. Create a General subcase for creating the user's account in the CRM system, and dispatch to a queue based on auto-destination rules. Dovetail Task Manager is also extensible using customization, allowing it to perform other actions, within the Clarify/Dovetail system itself, or even as a mechanism for integrating with other systems. Dovetail Task Manager replaces the old Clarify Task Manager module. But it also opens up a whole new avenue…

What’s New in Dovetail Agent 10

June 1, 2016 We recently released Dovetail Agent version 10. Or Dovetail Agent X, for you roman-numeral types.Here’s a quick rundown of the major changes. Dovetail Task ManagerDovetail Task Manager is a new optional module that allows actions to occur automatically when a task set is selected from a case.The most common action is creating a subcase.For example, when the New Employee Task Set is run:Create a General subcase for setting up the employee's network account and dispatch to the Network queue.Create an Administrative subcase for ordering business cards and assign to a specific employee.Create a General subcase for creating the user's account in the CRM system, and dispatch to a queue based on auto-destination rules.Dovetail Agent can work with either Clarify Task Manager or Dovetail Task Manager. No surprise, we recommend using Dovetail Task Manager!Dovetail Task Manager is also extensible using customization, allowing…

Improving our Slack integration

December 10, 2015 SlackLast year I posted about Integrating Clarify/Dovetail with your group chat app. That post was around the time we started using Slack for our group chat.At that time, I was using Slack’s simple webservice to post messages about cases. OriginalFor example, case dispatch notifications looked like:Simple. But not very detailed. ImprovedRather than just using Slack’s simple web service, I’m now using their Attachments, which allow for more richly formatted messages.Notice there’s now much more information available, including:Top-level message (In this case,  “Case Dispatch Notification”)Case IDContact and Site NameCase title (which links to the case in Dovetail Agent)SeverityQueueLink to the case in Dovetail Mobile And it’s easy to add whatever other relevant information in there that I would like. Business Rule ActionThe business rule that fires on case dispatch now calls the CaseMessage.bat file, like so:C:\Dovetail\RuleManagerActions\slack\casemessage.bat [Object ID] dovetail "Case Dispatch Notification"To that BAT file,…

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,…

Troubleshooting a bad business rule

June 16, 2015 When Dovetail Rulemanager has a problem processing a business rule for some reason, it logs the problem. We can use these logs to help determine exactly what the problem is, and how to fix it. We’ll walk through an example on troubleshooting a specific issue. In this scenario, Rulemanager logged an error: 2015-06-12 10:23:07 [Consumer7] ERROR FChoice.RuleManager.OperandException - FChoice.RuleManager.OperandException: (-1) Invalid operand format for an IsIn operator. It looks like there was a problem with a rule condition that uses an IsIn operator. So how do we know which rule this is referring to? There may be hundreds of rules in the system. All of the needed information is contained in the log file. But since Rulemanager is a super busy application, and it’s multi-threaded, the logs contain a LOT of information. In a log file I recently received from…

Using task sets beyond task manager

April 22, 2015 Task Manager Task Manager is an optional Clarify module that allows subcases and action items to be automatically created when a task set is selected from a case. Task Manager and the Clarify Classic Client Within the Clarify Classic Client, this process is started by clicking the Jobs button on a case, and then selecting a Task Set to be executed. The Clarify Client then evaluates the task set and creates the subcases and action items as needed. Task Manager and Dovetail Agent Within Dovetail Agent, this process is started by choosing the Workflow - Run Task Set menu item on a case, and then selecting a Task Set to be executed. User's must have the Task Manager privilege in order to see this menu item. Dovetail Agent itself does not evaluate the task set and create subcases. Instead, Dovetail…

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…