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Cookbook · Personalization

Extend the appointment card with templates

Admin ~20 min

Capture data that doesn't fit the default appointment card - extra fields, checklists, free-text notes - and have it flow back to the back-office system. Templates are picked per task, so different jobs can carry different fields.

Before you start​

Do not confuse this with field templates. They sound alike and solve opposite problems:

  • Field templatesField templateA rule that composes an appointment subject and body from job and task fields, so the text reads the way planners want. display existing data, composing a readable subject and body from fields the back officeBack officeThe ERP or business system Dime.Scheduler plans for - most often Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. It owns the master data and remains authoritative over what it receives. already sends.
  • Appointment templatesAppointment templateA set of extra fields added to the appointment card, scoped to source types, so planners can capture data beyond the defaults. capture new data, adding tabs and fields to the appointmentAppointmentA task scheduled to a resource for a specific period - the scheduled instance you see on the planning board. card that planners fill in, and sending the result back to the back office.

If you want the board to read better, you want field templates. If you want the planner to record something that has nowhere to live today, you are in the right recipe.

Have the back-office side settled before you build the template. The data flows back, so something at the far end needs to be ready to receive it.

1. Understand the shape​

An appointment template adds one or more tabs to the appointment card. Each tab holds a set of fields: text, numbers, dates, yes/no, dropdowns. Planners fill them in as they work, and the values travel back to the back office with the rest of the appointment.

The important design property is that a template is chosen per task, not applied globally. The back office sends a template code along with the task, and a template marked as Default catches the tasks that arrive without one. A maintenance job and a sales visit can therefore each show only the fields that matter to them, rather than one bloated card carrying every field anyone ever asked for.

2. Define the fields and the template​

Build the fields, group them into sections, and assemble the sections into a template in appointment templates. The page works bottom-up, fields first, and the assignment gesture reads from right to left, which feels backwards the first time.

A section is one tab on the card, so group fields into sections the way the planner works, not the way the database is shaped. A single tab of thirty fields is where this feature goes wrong: planners stop filling it in, and half-complete data is worse than none.

Field type matters more than it looks. A Select field produces data you can report on; a free-text field produces data you cannot. Reach for text only when the answer genuinely is prose. Decide codes before you create anything: the back office identifies the data by them, so they cannot be changed afterwards.

3. Decide how tasks pick up the template​

This is the step that makes the template appear at all, and the one most likely to be missed. A template that no task points to is configured, saved, and invisible.

Two routes exist. Either the back office sends the template's code with each task, which is the right choice when different kinds of work need different cards, or you tick Default on one template so that every task arriving without a code gets it. Ticking Default moves it away from whichever template had it before, so check that before you confirm.

If your tenant feeds from several back offices, agree the template codes with each of them, since they all land on the same catalog.

4. Verify on a real appointment​

Open an appointment created from a task that carries the template, or from any task if you marked it as the default, on the planning board and confirm the new tab appears with the fields you defined.

Then close the loop properly. Fill a field in, save, and check the value arrives in the back office. The tab rendering is only half the feature; a template that displays but does not round-trip is the failure mode worth catching before rollout.

Finally, open an appointment whose task carries a different template code, or none at all if you set no default, and confirm the tab is absent. That verifies the binding does what you intended rather than applying everywhere.

Last updated on by Hendrik Bulens