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Resource Scheduler & Extender

  • 10 July 2019
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This is going to be a lengthy post about the Resource Scheduler extender. Instead of making a couple of threads, I’ve bundled all questions we have regarding the resource scheduler into one.

Extender properties


Let’s start with the extender properties of the resource scheduler. In addition to the extensive amount of properties you’re presented with, the description of said properties leaves a lot to be desired. Most of the time there’s little to nothing added to make clear what a certain property really does or how to properly set up one.

For example:


As you can see the value type of the ‘Days’ property is Int. But if I, let’s say, enter 5 as a value and refresh my model I get the following warning.



That leaves me with a lot of questions as to what format is acceptable in the value field.

Another example of a description that raises more questions than answers is in the same custom scale subject. The Timespan format, it’s description and expected value type.



Again, I’m not really sure what is expected as a value to display the correct format of the timespan.

The above examples are specific to the custom timespan properties, but the same questions and confusion are raised with other properties as well.

Question 1

Is there an (updated) document with all the properties’ descriptions that describes a bit more than it currently does?

Task settings - Drag&Drop external row


We currently have a task and drag&drop interaction set up that both handle the, well, dragging and dropping between an external row and the resource scheduler, like this:


However, what we would like is to drag & drop a task/appointment (work order in this case) back to the external row. This would be ideal if a wrong record gets dragged on to the scheduler and you want to fix that mistake. The problem here is that in the extender properties you can only assign one task to the ‘external drop’ property, so adding another task to do the reverse isn’t possible.



I tried to do it in the same task. I tried to reverse the source and target table in drag&drop interaction but to no avail.

The solution I’ve found is to assign a double click task which updates some data and ensures the work order to be put back in the external row it was dragged from, like this:


Question 2

Is it possible to do this in the same task/drag&drop interaction? Am I missing something here?


Disabled days (weekend) & working hours


In the extender properties there’s an option to set up disabled days. These days, let’s say Saturday and Sunday, get greyed out in the scheduler as follows.



However, even if the property name is called ‘disabled days’ the chosen days aren’t really disabled. They’re just greyed out and we can still drag a work order to one of these days.

Some companies work the weekends and some don’t. The same can be said for working hours. Just like some companies work weekends and some don’t, some companies work nightly hours and again, some don’t. We would like to give them the option to show/hide the chosen disabled days/working hours by means of a checkbox as follows.




Question 3

The question here is if it’s at all possible to truly hide the weekend days/working hours in the scheduler, that are indicated as disabled, instead of just greying them out.


Start time placement


When dragging and dropping a work order on to the scheduler, next to adding a start- and end date you also have to give up a start- and end time. But as you can see in the picture below even if the start time is set at 10:00, the placement of the work order is always set at 00:00 of the chosen start date.



What we would like to happen is that the work order is placed at the chosen start- and end time.

Question 4

Does this have something to do with the work times view? Any solution or clarification would be appreciated.


I hope the given information and questions asked are clear enough. If you need any additional information please say so and I'll do my best to provide what's needed.

Looking forward to your response.
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Best answer by Roel 12 July 2019, 10:14

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Hi Rony,

To answer your questions to my ability:
  1. I'm not sure if there's such a document, maybe @Anne Buit can provide some details about it
  2. Sadly not possible now as far as I know, feel free to add this as a wish if truly not possible
  3. Again sadly there's no option to hide such days I believe
  4. Since we work on the same project I know a little more background. The column you have entered in the Start/End date column property of the Task settings is a Date column. This means the resource scheduler reads the date and then shows the task as if it was planned for the whole day. Solution for this is to create a new column in the Task view that combines the Date and the Time as date time, then listing this column in your Extender property as Start/End date column. The resource scheduler should now properly show the task at the correct date and time and have the correct duration.
Hope this helps!

Kind regards,
Mark
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Hi Rony,

To answer your questions to my ability:
  1. I'm not sure if there's such a document, maybe @Anne Buit can provide some details about it
  2. Sadly not possible now as far as I know, feel free to add this as a wish if truly not possible
  3. Again sadly there's no option to hide such days I believe
  4. Since we work on the same project I know a little more background. The column you have entered in the Start/End date column property of the Task settings is a Date column. This means the resource scheduler reads the date and then shows the task as if it was planned for the whole day. Solution for this is to create a new column in the Task view that combines the Date and the Time as date time, then listing this column in your Extender property as Start/End date column. The resource scheduler should now properly show the task at the correct date and time and have the correct duration.
Hope this helps!

Kind regards,
Mark


Hi Mark,

Fancy seeing you here!

Question 4 is answered and working as it should. Thanks Mark, I'll give you a +1 like you asked me to. 😏
Userlevel 4
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Hey Rony,

Question 1:
All the documentation with all the properties explained can be found here:
https://office.thinkwisesoftware.com/docs/docs/sf/resource_scheduler.html

Question 2:
Dragging an appointment from the scheduler to an external grid is not supported yet. We will create a wish on our product backlog and implement this feature in the future.

Another wish on our Product Backlog is to appoint an SF task to the delete button. So when you select an appointment and hit delete a chosen task will be executed with the task_id automatically filled in, simulair to the double click task you implemented as workaround. This will also be implemented in the future. For now your work around seems to be the only option.

Question 3:
Removing days from the scheduler is only supported in custom code for now. Since we already created this feature it should not be hard to implement this for weekend days. I will put this wish on our Product Backlog so that disabled days will actually be removed.

However removing night hours will be far more challenging. For the scheduler we use a 3rd party component which allows us to override the time scales, but this process is immensely complex and consumes a lot of time to get right. In your situation you want to skip the night hours, other customers want to see only actual work times, e.g. from 06:00 until 18:00. So I'm not sure if we want to implement this 'night' feature by default. I will discuss this with my colleagues and let you know what we are going to do with this.

If you have any further questions, please let us know :)

Kind Regards,
Roel
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Hi @Roel,

Thanks for your answer.

A lot of the features you listed sound ideal. Can't wait to see some of them slowly showing up in the SF for us to use.

For now we'll find some more workarounds to the problems we're facing. I'll let you know if I have any questions.

Thanks again.

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