Employee Blogs


  • jQuery 1.4 breaks ASP.Net MVC actions with array parameters
    We had a Ajax-ified page break on us today and eventually figured out that the cause was related to an upgrade of jQuery and in particular a change in how jQuery 1.4 does serialization of array parameters for Ajax operations. From the jQuery 1.4 Release Notes . jQuery 1.4 adds support for nested param serialization in jQuery.param, using the approach popularized by PHP, and supported by Ruby on Rails. For instance, {foo: ["bar", "baz"]} will be serialized as “foo[]=bar&foo[]=baz”. In jQuery 1.3, {foo: ["bar", "baz"]}...
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  • 02-24-2010, 4:46 PM by kmiller to Kevin Miller
    4 Comments 630 Views
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  • Veritest login issues
    As part of being a Microsoft partner, specifically an ISV, we’re required to have our products tested. The testing organization is Veritest, a service of Lionbridge . Earlier this week, I created a login, and submitted a product for testing. At some point, I may revisit the hoops I needed to jump; through do this – it was crazy. But that’s a post for another day. After sumbitting the product online, I got an email from Lionbridge saying that I needed to complete a questionnaire before testing could occur. So off I go to login to their site to complete...
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  • 02-23-2010, 11:04 AM by gsherman to Gary Sherman
    0 Comments 185 Views
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  • Would Clarify Bootcamps be useful?
    One of the themes I’ve picked up on recently is that there seems to be a lot of organizations who still use Clarify /Amdocs, but not to its full potential. No where near its full potential. I’ve recently talked to a bunch of people who don’t really know how to use it fully, extend it, what functionality is available, or even how to maintain it. I’ve seen the same issue on both sides of the house: Technical IT resources who don’t know how to customize it, what all of the moving components are, what to do when something goes wrong, or even where to...
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  • 02-22-2010, 4:23 PM by gsherman to Gary Sherman
    0 Comments 109 Views
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  • Messaging as an Enterprise Integration Pattern
    With our recent release of Dovetail Carrier , we’ve been having more conversations around messaging as an enterprise integration pattern. (For more on Carrier, be sure to check out some of Kevin Miller’s recent posts on the subject .) In my feed reader this morning, I saw a new post from Gregor (a software architect from Google) where he discusses some of his thoughts about the right places for use of messaging . Good stuff. The list of advantages for messaging as a transport mechanism cuts to the heart of why we like messaging. For even more, be...
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  • 02-19-2010, 9:22 AM by gsherman to Gary Sherman
    0 Comments 91 Views
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  • WebHooks in Clarify/Dovetail
    What is a WebHook? From the WebHooks wiki : The concept of a WebHook is simple. A WebHook is an HTTP callback: an HTTP POST that occurs when something happens; a simple event-notification via HTTP POST. A web application implementing WebHooks will POST a message to a URL when certain things happen. When a web application enables users to register their own URLs, the users can then extend, customize, and integrate that application with their own custom extensions or even with other applications around the web. For the user, WebHooks are a way to...
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  • 02-09-2010, 3:20 PM by gsherman to Gary Sherman
    1 Comments 170 Views
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  • Running mklink in NAnt
    Since there is not an executable for mklink , it took me a minute to figure a good solution to running mklink as a target in my build script. The NAnt has an exec task that is used for running command line targets, but it requires an executable as its target. The command shell works in this situation, so I just need to exec the command shell, and have it execute mklink as its target. Here is my NAnt target: <exec program="cmd" commandline="/c mklink /d mobile\source\CustomControllers customizations\Controllers"/>
  • 02-05-2010, 1:10 PM by styson to Sam Tyson
    0 Comments 104 Views
  • Carrier – Customizing Your Response Emails
    Out of the box Dovetail Carrier is very good at receiving emails and allowing you create business functionality which can react to incoming messages. There is a flip side to receiving emails. Sending them. This post will explain how the Email Agent extension uses templates to send email notifications. First we need to explore what information your template will have available to it. We’ll start by setting the stage. Real World Scenario In the Email Agent extension. When an email is received by your company’s support account the New Case Support...
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  • 02-03-2010, 12:33 PM by kmiller to Kevin Miller
    1 Comments 142 Views
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  • Transitioning Beyond 255 Transitions
    In Clarify, Logistics and Quality both use transitions to determine how a request moves from one condition to another. To change a condition, a transition must be defined between the two conditions for that part request type. To restrict access to critical part operations, you can administer permissions according to privilege classes. In complex installations, the number of transitions across both business areas can easily reach the imposed limit of 256 transitions. This limitation can truly impose headaches when the transitions cannot be accurately...
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  • 01-29-2010, 5:49 PM by styson to Sam Tyson
    0 Comments 99 Views
  • Dovetail is hiring a .NET Developer
    We're expanding the development team on our line of existing products. You'll be working on a small team that develops applications for large businesses using some of the latest technology. You will be involved in all aspects of solution development, including analysis, design, development, testing, documentation, and support. We’re looking for a software developer with demonstrable C# (preferably .NET 2.0 or later) and HTML/CSS experience (ASP.NET MVC is a plus). Any experience with test-driven development or automated unit testing in general is...
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  • 01-29-2010, 12:16 PM by gsherman to Gary Sherman
    0 Comments 336 Views
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  • More On Dovetail Carrier RuleSets
    I wanted to discuss RuleSets in more detail this time diving deeper into a couple of topics I pulled out of Creating Your First Carrier Extension because they were too advanced for an introduction. RuleSets Have Context Your conditions and actions need a way to inspect the message they are evaluating. This is accomplished via the RuleContext object with is give to each condition and action being invoked by the RuleSet. Everytime Carrier starts executing your RuleSet it creates a new RuleSetContext object and puts the message being processed into...
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  • 01-28-2010, 2:24 PM by kmiller to Kevin Miller
    1 Comments 181 Views
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  • Creating Your First Carrier Extension
    Extensions are the heart of Dovetail Carrier. The application itself does nothing unless there is an extension present. This makes it important to understand how to create your own extensions. This guide will take you through creating a brand new extension and having it subscribe to one of the core Carrier messages IncomingEmailMessage . Create The Extension Project The first thing we are going to do is add a project to the extensions solution included with Carrier. Before you can do this you’ll need to unzip the \developer\extensions-source.zip...
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  • 01-28-2010, 10:48 AM by kmiller to Kevin Miller
    2 Comments 308 Views
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  • Using jQuery to check all CheckBoxes in an iframe
    In Dovetail Admin, there are a few pages where there is an option to check or uncheck a list of checkbox controls that are in an iframe. The Select All and Unselect All buttons perform the action, and using jQuery the codes becomes really simple and efficient. The code that the buttons use is shared, and the true/false value is passed in to the function to check or uncheck the boxes. The old code gets the iframe, gets all of the input fields, and then loops through all of the input fields. As it loops, if the field type is a checkbox , then the...
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  • 01-21-2010, 12:03 PM by styson to Sam Tyson
    1 Comments 399 Views
  • Configuring Topshelf Using A StructureMap Container
    At Dovetail we use StructureMap a lot. Lately we’ve also been using Topshelf a lot too. This post takes a look at how you can marry these two technologies together. We will be using the StrucutreMap container to configure which services get started by Topshelf at runtime. Simple Services Let’s start simple. We need a way to identify which configured types want to get configured to be spun up by Topshelf. To accomplish this I created an interface called ISimpleService which includes only the Start and Stop methods that Topshelf uses to manage the...
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  • 01-20-2010, 3:32 PM by kmiller to Kevin Miller
    1 Comments 886 Views
  • Controlling Application Lifetime In Topshelf
    One of Topshelf’s best features is the ability to easily host one or more services running side by side. In this post we will create a Topshelf service which will shut down the application. Lets take a look at how it is done. Coordinating the Service Let’s create a fake Health Monitoring service which will, sometime in the future, tell Topshelf to shut the application down. The Topshelf hook for controlling the state of all the services it is hosting is a type called IServiceCoordinator . Here is the code for our health monitor. public class HealthMonitoringService...
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  • 01-20-2010, 2:16 PM by kmiller to Kevin Miller
    2 Comments 1426 Views
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  • Clarify Technical Consultant posting
    For any of you Clarify peeps out there looking for a gig, there’s a Clarify Technical Consultant available at IDC Technologies in Silicon Valley. Requirements: 4-5 years in the following amdocs modules Clarify Application: amdocs crm, clarify classic client, call center application, clear support application, clarify schema, clarify deployment in 3-tier environment tuxedo VB 6 Minimum 4-5 years of experience in Clarify enhancements Understanding the customer requirements Enhancements and testing Note: This isn’t a position at Dovetail, and I don’t...
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  • 01-07-2010, 9:37 AM by gsherman to Gary Sherman
    0 Comments 696 Views
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  • Clock – A Super Simple Carrier Extension
    Let’s set aside TwitterAgent for a bit and create the simplest extension to Dovetail Carrier possible, a timepiece, a clock, a chronometer of sorts. The intent of this post is to document in one place all the pieces required to create a Carrier Extension. The Marker For now we need to mark the assembly with an attribute announcing it as a Carrier extension. [assembly: CarrierExtension] You just need to put this code somewhere but it usually goes in your AssemblyInfo.cs file. The Message We first need to create the message we’ll be publishing and...
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  • 12-16-2009, 5:51 PM by kmiller to Kevin Miller
    1 Comments 353 Views
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  • Customizing Dovetail Carrier - Consuming Messages With Rule Sets
    The next step in our plan to implement a Twitter version of Email Agent using Dovetail Carrier is to consume the direct messages coming from Twitter which we published last time . Message consumers basically…er, well they consume messages. The beauty of the message bus is that we have the ability to subscribe many consumers to the types of messages which we publish. Dovetail Carrier provides a way to compose your message consumers by assembling a set of conditions and actions called RuleSets. This RuleSet we’ll be examining will investigate an incoming...
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  • 12-10-2009, 4:55 PM by kmiller to Kevin Miller
    1 Comments 316 Views
  • Customizing Dovetail Carrier - Creating and Publishing Messages
    Previously we made a plan to go get Twitter direct messages and publish them into the Dovetail Carrier message bus. Thankfully the Twitter API is pretty simple but there are a few things to worry about. We need to listen to Twitter for direct messages. Transforming and publishing the direct message into the message bus. Host your Twitter polling and publishing service with Carrier. First Things First This is not a cookbook post. I don’t describe each step along the way that I took to create a Carrier Twitter extension. That said I hope to provide...
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  • 12-07-2009, 2:05 PM by kmiller to Kevin Miller
    2 Comments 1870 Views
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  • Dovetail / Clarify Happy Hour : Massachusetts Edition
    While I’m in Massachusetts next week, we’re sponsoring a get-together for our Dovetail and Clarify friends. Wednesday, December 16th from 5:30 - 8:00 at John Harvard's Brewpub in Framingham, MA . Drinks and appetizers are on us. It’s an informal evening, talking Dovetail and Clarify, technology, and meeting like-minded people, all while sharing a few pints. RSVP to the event through meetup.com: http://www.meetup.com/DovetailHappyHour/ Looking forward to seeing you there!   Click here to check out The Dovetail / Clarify Happy Hour Meetup!
  • 12-07-2009, 1:33 PM by gsherman to Gary Sherman
    0 Comments 267 Views
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  • Customizing Dovetail Carrier
    Kevin has started his first in a series of posts around customizing Dovetail Carrier . Good stuff! I’m looking forward to the rest of his series.
  • 12-07-2009, 11:37 AM by gsherman to Gary Sherman
    0 Comments 279 Views
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  • Customizing Dovetail Carrier – Making A Plan
    Dovetail Carrier facilitates the creation of an enterprise message bus where messages can be produced and more importantly consumed. We have included a framework for creating sets of rules that act as consumers of messages coming into the system. I will be doing a series of posts around creating custom extensions for Carrier. The goal of these posts is to educate you and to force me to shine a light on the Carrier customization story in order find the rough edges begging to be smoothed out. Here is what we are going to cover. Making A Plan (you...
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  • 12-04-2009, 5:56 PM by kmiller to Kevin Miller
    4 Comments 364 Views
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  • Thank You Mass Transit Team
    I just wanted to extend a thank you from Dovetail and myself to the Mass Transit project team of Chris Patterson and Dru Sellers for the great framework they put together and the excellent attention and support that they give to the community of users around the project. A few weeks ago we went live at a customer site with a product that uses Mass Transit and so far things are going very well.
  • 12-01-2009, 12:44 PM by kmiller to Kevin Miller
    0 Comments 308 Views
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  • Removing an iframe by using AJAX
    One of our core products at Dovetail Software is our classic ASP application, Dovetail Agent. This application has been in production for many years, and is very stable and reliable. However, since it is a classic ASP application, there is a lot of room for improvement. I recently upgraded the Notification feature of the application. Dovetail Agent is a web application that has a main page (the console), and notifications need to be delivered to users automatically, without the users having to find them manually. In the previous releases of Dovetail...
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  • 11-25-2009, 11:53 AM by styson to Sam Tyson
    0 Comments 262 Views
  • Adding a Custom Dialog To Your Wix Installer
    Recently I made the move to Wix3 for a couple of projects and I have been quite happy. One of the things that has been simplified is adding a a custom step into the installer process. I’ll leave the heavy lifting of how to insert the custom dialog to Jan Schepens’ post Making a custom setup dialog using WiX 3.0 . He tells you how to customize your UI layout and insert a new dialog into the process. Read this post it explains it well. Neil Sleightholm has a similar post Customised UI’s For Wix that is about removing dialogs from the layout. I’m going...
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  • 11-04-2009, 5:44 PM by kmiller to Kevin Miller
    2 Comments 1314 Views
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  • Simplification
    Just replaced this VB (shudder) code ' Build up additional info string using ' research time as formatted string addnl_info = "Elapsed time = " t_long = research_time If t_long > 86400 Then t_long2 = t_long \ 86400 Else t_long2 = 0 End If t_long = t_long - t_long2 * 86400 addnl_info = addnl_info & VB6.Format(t_long2, "000") & " " If t_long > 3600 Then t_long2 = t_long \ 3600 Else t_long2 = 0 End If t_long = t_long - t_long2 * 3600 addnl_info = addnl_info & VB6.Format(t_long2, "00") &...
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  • 11-03-2009, 4:35 PM by kmiller to Kevin Miller
    0 Comments 304 Views
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