• Elevating privileges for your installer
    Our new Seeker installer displays a list of websites to choose where to install the Seeker Web Service. This required us to elevate the privileges of the installer during the UI sequence to get the list of websites from IIS. Why go through the trouble? Wix includes ways to bind to IIS websites given the bindings: IP, port and host header. Before we asked the user what are the site’s bindings. That usually meant the user would have to fire up IIS manager and make sure they didn’t enter in the incorrect bindings. We wanted to improve the install experience,...
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  • 7 hours, 29 minutes ago by jvano to Joey Vano
    0 Comments 37 Views
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  • Dovetail information feeds
    Did you know we provide a few different information feeds that help you stay informed with information about Dovetail? By subscribing to feeds, new information is delivered to you – which means you don’t have to go visiting lots of different web sites to see if there’s new content available. Blogs There’s a RSS feed for all the Dovetail bloggers , or you can subscribe to individual bloggers, if you so wish, by visiting their page and clicking the orange RSS icons in your browser or by clicking the RSS link. Some of us also allow for subscribing...
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  • 8 hours, 33 minutes ago by gsherman to Gary Sherman
    1 Comments 82 Views
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  • Never underestimate the benefits of early feature reviews among team members!
    As soon as a feature is initially coded with some functioning UI (and before the developer has moved on to something else), it is, in my opinion, imperative that at least one developer sits down with at least one QA and one Documentation specialist to review the feature, with either the QA or Documentation person driving the application. The developer(s) will see firsthand what the user’s experience is, and get immediate feedback on what works well or what might cause confusion for the user. Together, everyone involved in the review can contribute...
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  • 09-01-2010, 7:38 PM by jillo to Jill Ott
    2 Comments 194 Views
  • IIS Configuration and Permissions for remote file attachments
    While setting up some advanced capabilities of DovetailAgent, we ran into some IIS/Windows permission issues. This post is to capture and share some of the learnings. To start with, Kevin Miller has a good post on installing Classic ASP web application on IIS7 . The “advanced” capabilities I’m referring to was setting up file attachment uploads, and saving those files off to a permanent file storage area, accessed by a UNC drive such as \\fileServer\attachments Environment: Windows Server 2008, Dovetail Agent 4.3 File Uploads The way file uploads...
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  • 09-01-2010, 7:07 PM by gsherman to Gary Sherman
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  • Dovetail is looking for a .NET Technical Lead
    We're looking for a proven .NET technical lead for one of our product lines. You'll be working on a small team that develops applications for large businesses using some of the latest technology. You will work closely with the VP of Products, and will be involved in all aspects of solution development, including analysis, design, development, testing, documentation, and support. Expectations include software design, system architecture, process improvement mentor to other team members technical leader on product architecture and quality validate...
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  • 08-30-2010, 2:24 PM by gsherman to Gary Sherman
    1 Comments 563 Views
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  • Initial Response
    When working cases in Clarify / Dovetail, an option available to agents is Initial Response. Initial Response allows an agent to mark that the initial response to a customer has occurred. True to its name, an Initial Response can only occur once in the history of a case. This Initial Response operation can be performed on either the Log Phone call or Log Email forms. Initial Response button in the User Interfaces Phone Log form in the Clarify Classic Client: Email Log form in the Clarify Classic Client: Phone Log form in DovetailAgent: Email Log...
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  • 08-26-2010, 7:34 PM by gsherman to Gary Sherman
    1 Comments 122 Views
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  • Another Dovetail CRM integration story…
    This is part two of a two-part series on integrating Dovetail CRM with Telligent Enterprise .  If you haven’t already, you might want to check out the first post in the series after you’re done reading this post. In this post I will talk about the second integration scenario laid out in the previous post. I won’t get into all the nitty-gritty detail (line-by-line of code), but I’ll post a general step-by-step tour of integrating Telligent Enterprise with Dovetail CRM. Let’s review the second scenario from my previous blog post: When someone...
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  • 08-26-2010, 3:58 PM by cmyers to Chad Myers
    0 Comments 84 Views
  • A Dovetail CRM integration story…
    Recently I was investigating various ways of integrating our Dovetail CRM product with the Telligent Enterprise collaboration software.  Telligent Enterprise is a tool that allows people within organizations to collaborate and share information and knowledge.  It has wikis, blogs, forums, and even social media-like features (imagine a Twitter + Facebook hybrid, but for employees inside your organization). I liked the thought of customer service agents and managers collaborating on cases together. I thought that I would try to bring these...
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  • 08-25-2010, 1:52 PM by cmyers to Chad Myers
    2 Comments 197 Views
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  • Segregating your data using Data Restriction
    The Dovetail SDK (fcSDK) includes Data Restriction Technology.Data Restriction allows you to segregate your Clarify/Dovetail database so that different sets of users can use the same forms (and customizations), yet see different sets of data from the database. This can include any items such as cases, sites, contacts, parts, etc. For example, suppose you have two different groups that support different product lines. You might set up Data Restriction so that the users in group 1 can only see group 1's sites, contacts, solutions, cases, and parts....
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  • 08-23-2010, 2:31 PM by gsherman to Gary Sherman
    0 Comments 118 Views
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  • Upgrade-Safe Customizations
    Enterprise  software, both legacy and new, handles upgrading customized software very poorly. Some software allows customizations, but forget about upgrading to a newer version of the base product without redoing all of your customizations. Some vendors take the approach that you shouldn't customize at all and, instead, use the software as it comes out of the box to avoid the travails of upgrading. At Dovetail, we asked the question, “What if we could design our base product so that it was both easy to customize and easy to upgrade? Why had...
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  • 08-23-2010, 1:41 PM by cmyers to Chad Myers
    1 Comments 697 Views
  • We Provide Superior Customer Service! So What, Don’t All Vendors Say That?
    We are in the process of re-designing our website. One of the great qualities of our company we wanted to highlight in our new website is our commitment to our customers, and how we truly do provide Superior Customer Service. It h as been our highest priority since the inception of the company. We understand how the customer service process works and we incorporate this knowledge and experience into our own software, process, and structure when supporting our customers. In a recent independent survey of our customer base, 100% of the respondents...
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  • 08-20-2010, 6:24 PM by slynn to Stephen Lynn
    0 Comments 84 Views
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  • Closing (and reopening) a solution
    A not-so-uncommon request I’ve heard over the years is the need to be able to close a solution. You can close a case, close an action item, close an opportunity – but you can’t close a solution in the out-of-the-box product. But this is a pretty easy customization – so lets walk through it. Why close a solution? Knowledge can become outdated. But we may want to retain that knowledge, especially when we’ve linked these solutions to cases or change requests . By closing it, we can mark it as no longer relevant, and closing will also remove it from...
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  • 08-18-2010, 4:20 PM by gsherman to Gary Sherman
    0 Comments 113 Views
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  • Linking Solutions / Cases / Change Requests
    One of the features available within a Clarify / Dovetail system is the ability to “link” cases to solutions. What this essentially means is that we’ve noted the particular solution that solved the case at hand. For example, if we have a case titled “How do I configure VPN on Windows 7?”, and we have a solution that answers this question, then we can link the case to that solution. In database terms, it simply means we’ve related or joined the case to the solution. Well, technically, a solution can has one (problem) description and can have many...
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  • 08-17-2010, 3:50 PM by gsherman to Gary Sherman
    1 Comments 112 Views
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  • How To Setup hMailServer To Use a SSL Certificate
    I am adding IMAP support to one of our products . Likely more that one person out there a needed to do this, so enjoy. I’ll take you from creating an SSL certificate to configuring hMailServer to work with both secure and regular connections to testing your setup. Creating a Self Signed SSL Certificate First things first you’ll need to download OpenSSL . I downloaded the 64bit 1.0 light version which required Visual C++ 2008 Redistributables (x64) to be installed first. I told the installer to put OpenSSL in my c:\utilites\ folder. Create a Key...
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  • 08-17-2010, 11:17 AM by kmiller to Kevin Miller
    0 Comments 159 Views
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  • New Blogger Inspired by Leaders
    I am honored to be the newest member of Dovetail Software’s passionate development team. My name is Emmelyn (“emma-leen”) Wang and I serve as the Information Developer for Dovetail CRM. I have created documentation for      both hardware and software--specifically Agile design and development. I have lived and worked in Silicon Hills/Austin for the past 12 years. While earning my M.A. with a Major in Technical Communication from Texas State University, I researched and specialized in international and cross-cultural technical...
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  • 08-16-2010, 8:54 AM by Emmelyn to Information Development
    0 Comments 127 Views
  • Reminder: Complimentary Webinar, Enhancing HR Service Delivery through Effective Case Management
    Tues., Aug. 17, 3:30 - 4:00 PM Eastern, Register at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/877720520 Tues., Aug. 24, 10:30 - 11:00 AM Eastern, Register at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/482489169   Topic: Learn how to enhance your HR service delivery through effective Case Management. Presenters: Russ Resslhuber, Product Manager Chad Myers, Director of Development Agenda: The agenda for this session will be to present details on the following subjects: Capturing and tracking all employee questions, issues, and requests regardless of...
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  • 08-13-2010, 5:19 PM by mrogers to Marilyn Rogers
    0 Comments 80 Views
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  • How To Configure Log4J via C#
    One of our products is currently using IKVM to interop with a java library . I kept seeing console warnings saying: log4j:WARN Please initialize the log4j system properly. Clearly the java library uses log4j and it is not getting initialized by my application. A customer was rightfully confused by this message so I spent a little time getting log4j setup and working. At first I was hoping I could host log4j configuration XML along side my log4net configuration but sadly that was a pipedream. I opted for this approach. public const string Log4JConfigFileName...
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  • 08-12-2010, 2:52 PM by kmiller to Kevin Miller
    0 Comments 153 Views
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  • Seeker: Serving File Documents
    A big new feature for the new version of Seeker is the ability to search and index files and attachments to Dovetail CRM entities (cases, bugs, solutions, etc).  Kevin Miller and Gary Sherman already posted some images here and here of files it in action.  I am going to go in a little more in depth on how we enabled files being served to the user and how to specify which files to index. Let’s start from the user perspective. A user makes a request that includes files from the file system that is indexed by Seeker.  There are two interesting...
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  • 08-10-2010, 8:55 AM by jvano to Joey Vano
    0 Comments 61 Views
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  • FiddlerCap – Easy way to capture local HTTP traffic
    An essential tool for web development is having some type of HTTP traffic debugger.  An excellent tool for a .NET developer is Fiddler .  There are numerous addons and it’s pretty easy to write your own.  There is similar tool called FiddlerCap that is a lightweight alternative to Fiddler.  This is aimed for the non technical user. When handling cases, the developer does not have the luxury of seeing the actual HTTP  request and responses from the customer.  I’ve been in situations where you tell the customer to “visit...
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  • 08-09-2010, 7:51 PM by jvano to Joey Vano
    0 Comments 67 Views
  • Seeker Indexer Architecture Changes
    Great changes are happening with our Dovetail Seeker search product. I wanted to talk about a core change to the product. By moving our application architecture to use messaging we are seeing increased flexibility, testability and performance. Why Messaging? Based on our experience building Dovetail Carrier (pdf) , our messaging oriented enterprise integration solution, we decided messaging was a great fit for Seeker’s search indexing windows service. We decomposed the indexer’s behaviors into work (message) producers and consumers. For example...
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  • 08-06-2010, 10:53 AM by kmiller to Kevin Miller
    0 Comments 118 Views
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  • Complimentary Webinar - Enhancing HR Service Delivery through Effective Case Management
    Topic: Learn how to enhance your HR service delivery through effective Case Management. Presenters: Russ Resslhuber, Product Manager Chad Myers, Director of Development Dates & Times: Tues., Aug. 17, 3:30 - 4:00 PM Eastern Tues., Aug. 24, 10:30 - 11:00 AM Eastern Agenda: The agenda for this session will be to present details on the following subjects: Capturing and tracking all employee questions, issues, and requests regardless of the channel (phone, self-service, and email), which enables true 24x7 coverage and accessibility Providing business...
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  • 08-05-2010, 3:38 PM by mrogers to Marilyn Rogers
    0 Comments 134 Views
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  • Great vs Bad Customer Service, and Technology had Nothing to do with It
    This past week I experienced both a great customer service experience and a poor customer service experience. As I stopped to think about both of these, something hit me; the experiences had nothing to do with the technology used by either company. We read everywhere about how important Social CRM is going to be to providing good customer service, but in reality, Social CRM will be only as good as the company’s policy with dealing with customers is. Let me elaborate. Two recent blog posts start down the path to making my point, but don’t completely...
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  • 08-04-2010, 8:23 AM by slynn to Stephen Lynn
    5 Comments 160 Views
  • Customizing the columns in Dovetail Agent console
    One of the common customization in Dovetail Agent is changing the columns that are shown in the console. Columns are typically added, removed, or reordered, depending on the business requirements and workflow of a company. In Dovetail Agent 4.3, the columns can be sorted dynamically by each user, and changes have been made to improve performance of the console by returning pages of records instead of all the records in a queue or wipbin. In Dovetail Agent 4.4 the process of getting the data has been improved, but is very similar in how the code...
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  • 08-03-2010, 6:11 PM by styson to Sam Tyson
    0 Comments 87 Views
  • Seeker 2.0 Installer
    Winding down on a project, there is one often neglected portion of development … the installation story.  Most software is going to need an installer.  Who is going to be doing all the IIS web site registration, windows service install, copying of files, file permissions, etc?  The user?  What happens when something fails?  If you are doing XCOPY, you are probably doing it wrong. We can do better than “look at the README with a to do list of 1,2,3,x” In the upcoming release of Seeker , the windows installer has been given...
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  • 08-03-2010, 4:13 PM by jvano to Joey Vano
    1 Comments 89 Views
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  • The Obligatory Hello Post
    Hello all.  I just would like to introduce myself first.  My name is Joey Vano and I am the newest Dovetail developer.  I just moved from Orlando to Austin to join this great team of passionate developers to help create high quality software.  This blog is going to be primarily filled with technical content that includes the work we are currently doing at Dovetail as well as my own personal interest (i.e. the latest shiny thing). Here is a short list of upcoming things I will be blogging about: Seeker 2.0 Installer goodness with...
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  • 08-03-2010, 4:10 PM by jvano to Joey Vano
    0 Comments 67 Views
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