When does it make sense to write a routine from scratch, versus using a proven API that has all the testing done? The answer comes down to time and cost of course, a different equation in each case.
A
recent dialog in the ITtoolbox Clarify forum illustrates the dimension
of the issue. A user asked for advice on Clarify’s Assign Case
functionality, and he was hoping to find some reusable code already
existing.
“The objective is:
When a case is getting created
with a specific information (Keyword) in a user defined field (in one
of the tabs), the case needs to be automatically assigned to a specific
user.” – Clarify Assign Case functionality
The auto destination rules in Clarify will
make this assignment, but it requires studying the documentation – a
non-trivial task in itself – to finesse the methodology. And the task
doesn’t end there. The possibilities expanded with input from another
user:
“Depending on how you are creating the case you could
use routing server to do the assign for you. it is a bit tricking to
assign then to dispatch to personal queue, we have done both. I am not
very happy with the skill assigning process but you could give it a
try. If you are creating the case in SQL then it may be easier to just add the part for assigning.”
At this point it was clear the user had some work in front of him whichever way he turned. Dovetail Software, expert Amdocs Clarify enhancement provider, came in with a labor-saving offer:
“We sell API toolkits that do what you want. For example, we have a Support Toolkit that includes an assign_case API. Just call this API, and it does all the work for you (does the assign, creates the activity log, creates the time bomb, etc.)”
How this story ends is not yet clear: the discussion continued with additional suggestions and scenarios for a few more rounds.
Reusable code is the administrator’s friend, and a handy API can make a lot of friends for a company. Such has been the case for Dovetail Software’s APIs
and web services for the legacy Amdocs Clarify install. For over a
decade Dovetail has been building its library of APIs – it now numbers
over six hundred – all to extend the performance of Clarify.
Are there any circumstances when you would prefer to write your own routine rather than use a provided API?
