Functionality

Functional items of Dovetail Agent worth noting.

Tags

Rather than a workflow item (such as a case or subcase) being in one (and only one) wipbin, Dovetail Agent has the concept of tags. You can tag any workflow item you want with as many tags as you want. These items are easily available from the console and from queries. This allows for more flexibility in how user's organize their work, and allows one to easily get back to any tagged item - such as those items you want to keep an eye on.

Users can manage their tags (rename, delete) from the My Tags page.

Dovetail Agent ships with a script that converts wipbins to tags. Refer to the Convert wipbins to tags section for more details.

Dates

As discussed in Time Zone handling Most dates are displayed in a timeago format, such as 2 days ago or in 11 hours. To view the exact date-time, simply put your mouse over the timeago format, and the exact date-time will be shown.

Time Ago

Avatars

An "avatar" is an image that represents you online—a little picture that appears next to your name when you interact with websites. Throughout the Dovetail Agent application (such as in case history), avatars are used to help identify a user. Dovetail Agent pulls these images from Gravatar based on the email address of the user. A Gravatar is a Globally Recognized Avatar. You upload it and create your profile just once, and then when you participate in any Gravatar-enabled site, your Gravatar image will automatically follow you there.

Avatar

Phone Logs

Since there was very little difference between a Notes Log and a Phone Log, the Phone Log input form has been removed from Dovetail Agent. This simplifies the process for users. Phone logs created from other applications will still be shown as part of the case/subcase history.

Auto-Destination

Auto-destination rules are supported for DISPATCH and ASSIGN operations for cases, subcases, and solutions.

When a user selects the Dispatch workflow operation, auto-destination rules are evaluated.

When a user selects the Assign workflow operation, auto-destination rules are evaluated.

For more information, refer to the Auto-Destination Rules knowledgebase article.

Task Manager

Dovetail Agent supports both Clarify Task Manager and Dovetail Task Manager, although only one can be in use at a given time.

Refer to the Task Manager guide for complete details.

Commitments

Users can create and update commitments for a case or subcase.

There are two ways to create a commitment for a case or subcase:

  1. Choose Commitment from the Log menu, which allows for a Quick Commitment
  2. Click the + icon on the Commitments tab header, which allows for a Full Commitment

Quick Commitment: Select a commitment title from a drop-down list, and a due date.

Full Commitment: Type in a commitment title, due date, reminder, and notes.

Commitment Templates

When a commitment reaches its reminder time, Rulemanager notifies the user using the Warning template. When a commitment expires, Rulemanager notifies the user using the Commitment template. These templates are part of your existing Clarify implementation. Dovetail provides more robust templates in the $dovetailAgent\source\config\dat\commitment-templates.dat file.

My Calendar

Users can access their calendar, which shows commitments (based on the commitment due date) and subcases (based on the due date).

Users can also share their calendar. The Share button on the My Calendar page exposes a public URL for the calendar, which can be given to people they wish to share their calendar data with. Exposes calendar data from 30 days ago to 30 days in the future (Can be configured within application settings). This URL can be imported into a Calendar application such as Microsoft Outlook as an Internet Calendar Subscription.

Impersonation

Dovetail Agent allows a user to impersonate another user. Dovetail calls this Impersonation. Clarify traditionally calls this Switch User.

Impersonation allows a user to essentially login as another user without knowing the other user's password. This is useful for managers to impersonate their employees in order to view their work and commitments, and to re-assign their work when necessary.

Once a user impersonates another user, they can revert the impersonation or log out. Nested impersonations are not allowed - a user cannot impersonate a (third) user while impersonating a user.

Activity Logs are added for both Impersonate and Revert actions, allowing for auditing of these actions.

In order to impersonate another user:

Canned Responses

Canned responses are re-usable text snippets that you can use when logging emails or notes on cases, subcases, and change requests. Canned responses can save you time if you’re often typing similar responses.

Users can create personal canned resonses, and can also share canned responses to other employees, to workgroups, or to everyone. Canned Responses that have been shared can be ignored/unignored.

Canned responses can include dynamic properties, such as the Case Title or Status. The list of available properties is the same as the list of business rule properties (excluding properties with a subtype of Alias).

Quick Close

The Quick Close functionality allows a case or subcase to be closed without fronting the Close form (where users select a status, resolution, and enter notes). With Quick Close, the case/subcase is closed without any additional user inputs.

This functionality is controlled by the Quick Close Case and Quick Close Subcase privileges.

Individual Contacts

Individual Contacts are typically used in a B2C (Business to Consumer) organization. Individual Contacts appear in the application without a site. Technically, they do have a contact role and a site at the database level. The site has a type of INDV. The address for the individual contact is actually the primary address for the site.

The Individual Contact feature is enabled using the IndividualContacts.FeatureEnabled application setting.

When enabled:

Reporting

Dovetail Agent Reporting is an optional reporting module that can be purchased from Dovetail Software. It allows non-technical end users to create and edit reports and dashboards without IT support. For more information, or to obtain this module, contact Dovetail Software.

Broadcasts

A broadcast is used to communicate a message to users - either everyone, or just to memberes of one (or more) workgroups. It will appear in their notification drawer. If a user has the Admin privilege, they can create/edit/delete broadcasts from the Admin page.

Markdown

Markdown is a lightweight and easy-to-use syntax for styling text on the web. You control the display of the document; formatting words as bold or italic, adding images, and creating lists are just a few of the things we can do with Markdown. Mostly, Markdown is just regular text with a few non-alphabetic characters thrown in, like # or *.

If a text area is markdown enabled, it will show a Markdown Supported icon next to it. Clicking on the Markdown Supported icon will open a markdown help page.

Markdown support is currently enabled for:

Enabled with the MarkdownSettings.IsRichLoggingEnabled application setting.

Feedback

Within the application, users can submit feedback, such as a Suggestion, Compliment, Bug, or Question. This allows system administrators to collect feedback from end users. Behind the scenes, this will create a new Action Item, which will be automatically dispatched to a queue using auto-destination rules.

This functionality can be enabled/disabled using the FeedbackActionItem.FeatureEnabled application setting. The Action Item type will be determined by the ActionItemSettings.FeedbackType application setting.

By default, Action items with a type of Feedback will be auto-dispatched to a queue named Feedback. This can be controlled using the Auto-Destination UI within Dovetail Admin, or by editing and re-importing the feedback.dat file.

Workgroup Attributes

Dovetail Workgroups allows for a Workgroup to be established with Employee attributes such as Privilege Class, Resource Configuration, Site, Supervisor, Notification Preferences, and Queues, among others.

As new Employees are added to the system, an Administrator can simply assign the new Employee to a Workgroup and have all this information populated in one step, thus greatly simplifying the creation of new employees.

When an employee changes work assignments, the attributes of the new workgroup can override the current settings for the employee automatically just by changing the workgroup.

For more information, refer to the How to use Workgroups and Workgroup Attributes in Dovetail Agent knowledgebase article.

Download Search Results

Search Results can be downloaded to an Excel or CSV file.

A few notes regarding this functionality:

Output Columns

The output columns for the downloaded search results are controlled by filter configuration files. The Agent application will match the search domain (such as Case or Contact) to a filter config with the same entity attribute. As there can be multiple filter configs for the same entity, a new category of search is used to indicate that this filter config is used when downloading search results.

For example, the beginning of the cases.filter.config file looks like this:

<filter name="Cases" entity="Case">
  <categories>
    <addCategory value="console" rank="0" />
    <addCategory value="search" />
  </categories>
...

Notice that this filter congig has an entity of Case and a category of search. So, when downloading search results for "Case", the columns defined in this cases.filter.config file will be used when downloading to an Excel or CSV file.

Solution Comments

Within the Dovetail SelfService application, users can leave comments and rate solutions. Comments are visible to all users of the SelfService application. If an inappropriate comment is logged, the comment can be marked as Internal within the Dovetail Agent application, thus hiding it from within the SelfService application.

Note: This functionality can be enabled/disabled using the SolutionComments.FeatureEnabled key within the appSettings file.

Solution Comments

Solution Ratings

Within the Dovetail SelfService application, users can rate solutions. Individual and overall average ratings are visible to users within the Dovetail Agent application and within the Dovetail SelfService application.

Solution Ratings

Log Email Templates for Cases and Subcases

Traditionally, when sending an email out (using the Log Email) function, the send_email_about_obj com_tmplte is used. The same template is used for cases and subcases. As of Agent 20.0, Dovetail Agent (and the underlying Dovetail SDK) support two new templates:

When performing a log email for a case, if the send_email_about_case template is present in the system, it will be used. Else, the send_email_about_obj template is used.

When performing a log email for a subcase, if the send_email_about_subcase template is present in the system, it will be used. Else, the send_email_about_obj template is used.

This allows for greater flexibility in configuring outgoing emails.

One common way that this is used is to allow different subject lines in outgoing emails for cases and subcases.

Dovetail Agent provides example templates in $agent\config\dat\example\email_templates.dat. These templates can be customized and imported into the database using DIET.

Use of these templates is entirely optional. If they are not imported into the database, then the existing send_email_about_obj template is used.

Note: If these templates are used, and Dovetal Carrier is also used for processing incoming emails, then be sure that the configurations between Dovetail Agent and Dovetail Carrier are aligned. (such as the EmailAgentExtensionSettings.CaseIdentifierFormat and EmailAgentExtensionSettings.SubcaseIdentifierFormat settings in Dovetail Carrier's emailAgentExtension.config file)

Mention an Employee

Sometimes you'll want to call the attention of another employee. When you include a mention (by typing @ and then the user's name or login name) in your notes, that employee will be notified via the "Notify @mentions" business rule. Mentions are currently supported only on cases, when Logging Notes or Logging Research Notes.

SMS Notifications

Dovetail Agent supports user notifications via SMS (working in tandem with Dovetail Rulemanager and Twilio). Requires Dovetail Rulemanager 2.4 or higher. For more information, refer to the Dovetail Rulemanager documentation.

Slack Notifications

Dovetail Agent supports user notifications via Slack (working in tandem with Dovetail Rulemanager). Requires Dovetail Rulemanager 2.7 or higher. For more information, refer to the Employee Notifications via Slack Knowledgebase article.

Still have questions?

For more information, or to discuss any of this in more detail, please contact Dovetail Support.