Need Help - Posting from the Clipboard in SC.

[Bison9]

Alright all you ServiceCenter gurus, I need help in a major way. Here is my issue : I am looking for a way to use a Display Option that will call a block of Javascript and / or a RAD function that has the ability to capture the last posted item on the local clipboard and paste that info back to a field in SC. My question here is : Is this even possible? and if so, where do I even begin with this? Thanks in advance for any help!

[Abhijeet]

Client side JavaScript allows to copy/paste from clipboard, but SC supports only server side JavaScript. Hence I don't think it's possible in SC.

[harn145]

The only option I see is using DDE, and call that DDE script via the DisplayOption (similar to the CTI integration).

[Bison9]

Yeah, I'm definitely going to go the DDE route. Now, here's what has to happen : There is an external knowledge Base called Authoria where users click a "Log Answer" button and a block of text underneath that button is to be logged into SC. To the best of my knowledge, this Log Answer button calls a .xsl file that i turn invokes a VBScript where the DDE calls into SC will be done. I have two questions for all of you now:

1.) Is there a dll/ActiveX control that will have to be packaged along with this VBScript in order to Log that text from Authoria into SC (this will be done with client side logging)?

2.) Is there any documentation at all as to the different possible DDE calls that can be made into SC? Basically, I will need a way, with VBScript to make some DDE calls into SC to log the text into a field on the current form displayed on the user's screen. Do any of you have an example of the VBScript code that I would have to use in order to accomplish this task? If not, is there any documentation that any of you may know of that may detail DDE calls into SC?

Thanks in advance for any help. I don't have much experience with this and I need to learn it fast!

[harn145]

Not got examples, but we've done similar things in the past.

In (some) answer:
1. Nope. The client is "prepackaged" with DDE support.

2. The Help actually contains some valuable information. You bascially have two types of DDE communication (CTI type integration and knowledge mgt type integration). The first is an "interaction" definition (SystemEvent) aimed at incoming DDE calls with a create/update action. When the function called from this DDE exists in this table, the corresponding RAD application is called. The second is poking SC from your script, which is aimed at a "screen" level interaction (like macro's).

This last one seems the most likely for your approach.

An example (from the help file):

The following example, written in VBA, illustrates a DDE script that takes a user directly to the
Database Manager from the login screen. Before executing this script, you must be on a ServiceCenter login screen.

Sub SC()
	Dim nChannel As Long
	Dim strReturned As String
	nChannel = DDEInitiate("ServiceCenter", "ActiveForm")
	DDEPoke nChannel, "$user.id", "falcon"
	DDEExecute nChannel, "[Transact( ""0"" )]"' login
	DDEExecute nChannel, "[Transact( ""1"" )]"' go to the command interface
	DDEPoke nChannel, "$command", "db"' go to the Database Manager
	DDEExecute nChannel, "[Transact( ""0"" )]"
	DDEExecute nChannel, "[SetFocus( ""file.name"" )]" ' set the focus in the file name box
	DDETerminate nChannel
	End Sub

[Bison9]

Harn, you're definitely right with that statement. I have seen this example in the SC help and now I am trying to find some documentation on the various DDE calls that can be made into SC using an external script. The example you have given gives me hope that there is a way to do this task yet. At this point however, I am really reaching for anything that can help me figure out what exact calls need to be made in SC in order for this thing to work. Is this a question for HP? Especially in the face of their knowledge base being somewhat disfunctional?

[Bison9]

I have been trying this VBA script as a generic test script :

Sub SC()
Dim nChannel As Long
Dim strReturned As String
nChannel = DDEInitiate("ServiceCenter", "ActiveForm")
DDEPoke nChannel, "description", "test"
DDETerminate nChannel
End Sub

I also have an open interaction in SC sitting on my desktop and as one can see from the example script above, I am trying to push the text "test" into the description field on this open ticket. I have tried running this test script in a VBA project in Excel, but am getting errors. So, my question now is how can I successfully test this script to get the text "test" to push into the description field on my currently open intercation ticket in SC?

Thanks for any help!

[jstagaman]

Sub SC()
Dim nChannel As Long
Dim strReturned As String
nChannel = DDEInitiate("ServiceCenter", "ActiveForm")
DDEPoke nChannel, "description", "test"
DDETerminate nChannel
End Sub

Thanks for any help!

Well, I can't really help with the DDE piece, but if you're trying to write data to the description field, since it is a character array shouldn't the text being posted be formatted as {"test line 1","test line 2"} rather than as a scalar value? Or, as an alternate approach, post "test" to description,1?