Extend the appointment card with templates
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 scoped to source types, 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 templates display existing data, composing a readable subject and body from fields the back office already sends.
- Appointment templates capture new data, adding tabs and fields to the appointment 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 templates are scoped to source types. A maintenance job and a sales visit can 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 and assemble them into a template in appointment templates.
Group fields into tabs 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 dropdown produces data you can report on; a free-text field produces data you cannot. Reach for text only when the answer genuinely is prose.
3. Assign the template to source types
This is the step that makes the template appear at all, and the one most likely to be missed. Bind the template to the source types it applies to. An unassigned template is configured, saved, and invisible.
If your tenant feeds from several back offices, be deliberate here: the same source type name can exist in more than one source app.
4. Verify on a real appointment
Open an appointment of a matching source type 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 of a non-matching source type and confirm the tab is absent. That verifies the scoping does what you intended rather than applying everywhere.
Related
- Generate appointment subjects with field templates for the display-side counterpart.
- Populate a fresh instance from code if you are pushing appointment field values over the API.