Latest Extensions for DayBack Calendar (part 1)

We’ve been publishing a lot of new extensions to DayBack, many with example code to get you started. You’ll find these on the DayBack blog and in the new Extensions Library.

Here’s a recap of some of the coolest examples…

Print Your Calendar at a Custom Size

Print FileMaker Calendar

Printing calendars has always been tricky as some of the information you want to see is often off-screen. While printing in a regular FileMaker sub-summary report is often the best approach, sometimes you want to SEE the calendar grid or timeline. This custom action gets you closer to printing everything on one screen.


Adding a Second Color to Your Events

Color FileMaker Calendar

People love DayBack because they can bring colors and icons into their calendar letting them understand their schedule at a glance. We’ve published a number of examples for doing this, and this one adds a border down the left side of your event. This color can represent any field in your FileMaker table.


Automated Reminders

FileMaker Caledar Reminders
Sometimes you want to create events in your calendar from other applications. In this example, we wanted to schedule follow-up calls from inside our help desk software. DayBack can receive requests like this as URL parameters and render custom forms to make scheduling faster. Here’s an example of a form we built to schedule reminders. Part 1 of this post shows a simpler version; part 2 shows what we’re doing now.


Assign a List of Unscheduled Items

FileMaker Calendar Spreadsheet
Sometimes you have a list of items that you need to schedule instead of just one. Maybe it’s a list of project milestones or last month’s sales you want to follow up on. In this video, we demonstrate a way to copy and paste events from a list into your calendar. This has been a very popular workflow for folks with complex scheduling requirements.


Here is part 2 with more examples.

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New Week Views in DayBack for FileMaker

You can now expand DayBack’s week views to show two or three weeks at a time. We’ve been using this internally in beta mode for a few weeks, and it’s very helpful to see what’s coming up next week while navigating this week’s work. Find tips on how to work with these new views on the DayBack blog.

To-Do Lists in FileMaker – New in DayBack Calendar

Now create and manage FileMaker to-do lists directly from the Unscheduled Items sidebar in DayBack Calendar. Our latest extension brings to-do behavior to any FileMaker table. Like unscheduled items, this behavior is based on a new checkbox field in your table, so some or all of your records in the table can be treated as to-dos. Mark your to-do’s done as you complete them, or drag them into the calendar to schedule time to work on them. See it in action here: Customize Your To-Do Lists This extension was designed to be pretty a scaffold onto which you could build your own, more specific to-do behaviors by customizing the action itself or the FileMaker scripts tha manipulate events. Here are some ideas to get you started. Add To-Do Lists to Your FileMaker Calendar If you haven’t already enabled the unscheduled sidebar along DayBack’s right edge, you can learn how to turn that on here: unscheduled items in DayBack. Then, download the custom action and learn how to configure it here: To-Do Lists in DayBack Calendar.

Improved Resource Selection

We’ve made some big changes to how you filter and assign resources when editing events in DayBack. These changes will make it much easier to work with large numbers of resources, especially for folks assigning multiple resources to the same event. Watch a video of the new behaviors and learn more here: Adding Multiple Resources to an Item. If you haven’t looked at your resource field mapping in a while, here is how you set that up: Mapping the Resource Field in FileMaker. Please get in touch if you have any questions about this; we’re here to help.

Suggesting Appointment Slots

Show Available Slots that Match Multiple Criteria Schedulers often look for gaps in their schedules to find the open resources for each opportunity. But sometimes, gaps don’t tell the whole story. You may have invisible criteria like skill-matching, cleaning requirements, or multiple resources to schedule at once. Or you may be on the phone with an opportunity and must suggest available times as quickly as possible. In these cases, DayBack can suggest the best slots that match all of your requirements. Scheduling Criteria Are Often Invisible In the movie above, schedulers can see openings for the two technicians, but they can’t easily see if the required rooms and equipment are free at the same time. While DayBack can show different types of resources simultaneously, as the number of criteria increases, it can be hard for schedulers to see everything at once and still make good decisions. Our customers often have rules that constrain when an otherwise open slot can be scheduled. Here are some of the invisible criteria we’ve built out for customers: Because DayBack is highly scriptable, it can scrub open slots against a variety of criteria to render just the slots that fit all your requirements. When multiple slots match, DayBack can even rank them so you can present the most ideal slots to your clients first. You Have to *See* Slots in Context to Make the Best Decisions Many scheduling apps present possible appointments as a list of dates and times. Without showing more information about each slot, schedulers can book days too tightly, always suggest the same providers first, or create huge gaps in some provider’s schedules. Ranking slots can help, but we’ve found that highlighting ideal slots alongside existing appointments gives schedulers the information they need to make the best decisions. We’ve seen schedulers quickly offer to split appointments or to slightly change services when they see available slots in the context of other appointments, trainings, vacations, and breaks. Getting Started We customize the recommendation of slots for each deployment as part of DayBack’s implementation packages. Please get in touch if you think DayBack could make a big impact on your team.

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