We just posted a new update of DayBack with a sweet little enhancement to the Resources tab: you can now change the number of resource columns on the fly. This short movie shows how that works and how to download the update into your copy of the calendar.
If you’re new to DayBack, learn more here: DayBack Calendar Add-On for FileMaker.
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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.
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.
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.
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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3 Comments
Very kewl, John. Since we can see a dynamic number of resources and now set the number, what would you think about taking a step further. By that I mean create a group or two of sets of resources that all share something in common – what comes to mind is a group of pieces of equipent (OEMs) that constitute a bigger group piece of equipment, or unit. Then one of the benefits might be that we could expand and contract the group on the resources page. Here’s where I’d use it, specifically.
Sai, for example, I have a Unit that contains 5 pieces of equipment all of which are tracked for their hours of use or miles indetermining when each should go into the shop for maintenance. It’s easy enough to track them all individually on the resources page, but how kewl would it be if one of the pieces of equipment were down (prompting a highlight for the whole Unit being down) so that the scheduler could determin which one it was and instead of showing all the other pieces of equipment in the group, she could simply contract the group to show only the Unit itself, marked as down.
I like it! That’s similar to what’s demonstrated here… http://www.seedcode.com/custom-sidebar-for-dayback/ …where photographers are grouped into regions but I like the idea of expanding and contracting groups. And maybe having alerts for a resource trickle up to the group. Thanks.
Right, the trickle up effect. It’s being done now at the root level or OEM equipment level, and it’s also set up to flow up to the group. we just didn’t think too much about showing the Group only….now we do. I like it too.
BTW, this update went infinitely more smoothly than the last. 😉