Source Types

The Source App and Source Type fields are what connect a Business Central record to Dime.Scheduler and route planning data back to the right table. You've likely already set up Source App, since it's required to establish the connection between BC and Dime.Scheduler. Source Type is the field that does the routing, and this page explains how it works. First, a quick recap of what both fields mean.

Definitions

Dime.Scheduler is a centralized planning application. One of its key tenets is the ability to accommodate data from different origins. For instance, it is perfectly acceptable to plan work orders from Business Central, CRM, imported Excel sheets, etc., and Dime.Scheduler won't break a sweat because of the existence of the Source App and Source Type fields in the data model.

Source App

When the planner creates an appointment for a resource or task, Dime.Scheduler knows which system to notify. Through the connector setup, Dime.Scheduler will find a matching SourceApp and subsequently send the appointment to the corresponding URI.

The source app field is a unique identifier that identifies a back-office instance such as a tenant of Business Central, a test environment, an instance of CRM cloud, or any other application you wish to use to feed data into Dime.Scheduler.

Source Type

The SourceType is used inside the back-office system itself. A source type represents a distinct entity such as a service order, production order, assembly order, etc.

The standard connectors that Dime Software provides make it possible to plan different types of resources and tasks. When Dime.Scheduler posts an appointment to a standard connector, it ends up in a staging table, which is then processed by the connector to ensure the appointment produced in Dime.Scheduler is traced back to the original record using the externally identifiable fields (JobNo, TaskNo, ResourceNo) that identify the record.

How it works

In the standard connector for Dime.Scheduler in Business Central, source types are created by the FastTrack wizard or the Dime.Scheduler setup page. Whenever you enable a module, a new entry will be created in the Dime.Scheduler Source Types list.

tip

Hit ALT + Q and look for Dime.Scheduler Source Types in the search bar to locate this table.

A source typeSource typeAn identifier that, together with the source app, tells Dime.Scheduler which back-office table a record belongs to. identifies a coherent area in Business Central. The standard connector defines the following types and associates them with the corresponding BC tables:

Source Type	Table(s) used
Resource	156
Service	5900, 5901
Job	167, 1001, 1003
Assembly	900
Production	99000754, 99000758, 5405, 5409, 99000754, 99000758
Sales	36, 37
HR	5206, 5207

These source types ship out of the box, along with the code units that handle incoming appointment information. You can also create your own source types and link them to a custom table in Business Central. A single source type may be linked to multiple tables. A 'Job', for instance, might cover the job header, a job task, job planning lines, and any other level you need. In the end, a source type is a string that drives the routing mechanism when a new appointmentAppointmentA task scheduled to a resource for a specific period - the scheduled instance you see on the planning board. hits the Dime.Scheduler Appointments table.

Each taskTaskA unit of work that belongs to a job. It appears in the open task list until it is scheduled to a resource. that needs to be planned is identified by:

• Source AppSource appAn identifier Dime.Scheduler attaches to data so it can route a change back to the correct back-office system.: A unique string that describes which administration/system owns this record. The source app is used to find matching backoffice systems to send appointment information back to. There can be multiple connectors for a single source app. A common pattern is to send data back to BC, but also invoke a webhook to send out emails, run Power Automate flows, etc.
• Source Type: A unique string that indicates which table the record comes from. This is to prevent duplicate numbers. For instance, 'ORDER002' may show up in multiple tables. By decorating a task with an additional source type property, we can distinguish between the different tables in the system. Two records with 'ORDER002' can coincide, as long as they have different types in the system (e.g. SALES ORDER002 and SERVICE ORDER002).
• Job No: Typically the No. field on the header level of the order.
• Task No: The No. field of the level that the customer wants to plan. When planning at the header level, the Task No will be identical to the Job No. in Dime.Scheduler.

To the user, this is mostly metadata, but it becomes crucial when the planner schedules a task on the planning boardPlanning boardThe main graphical scheduling surface where dispatchers drag tasks onto resources across a timeline.. That's when Dime.Scheduler contacts the systems that want to be notified of the planning data. Specifically, it reaches out to connectors that match the job's 'Source App'.

Not every system needs the 'Source Type' when the appointment comes in. The standard Exchange connector, for example, has no use for it, since appointments just need to be synchronized with the resource's Outlook calendar. For the Business Central integration, though, it is essential, because we need to write back to the right table.

For example, when a user plans a task in Dime.Scheduler that is tied to a...

• ...service item line, you may want to process the appointment as a resource allocation.
• ...job task, you may want to process the appointment as a job planning line.
• ...cause of absence, you may want to process the appointment as an employee absence registration.
• ...custom table, you'll probably want to process the appointment into a custom table as well.

The standard extension for Dime.Scheduler in Business Central ships workflows for the supported source types listed above. For each entry in the source types table, you specify a code unit to run for every incoming appointment with that source type. When Dime.Scheduler finds a match, it executes that code unit.

This leaves the door wide open for custom development. You can override the handling logic while keeping the default source types, or replace both with your own source types and handling code units.

In the example above, for the incoming appointment, code unit no. 2087646 will be used to write back appointment information to the job with the default functionality that is shipped in our standard extension.

Source Types table

The table is simple, but its contents have a profound impact on how planning data from Dime.Scheduler is processed in Business Central.

Field, tab or group	Description
Source Table No.	Enter the table number or select it from the list for each table that is sent to Dime.Scheduler (e.g., 5901, Service Item Line or 1001, Job Task).
Source Type	Define the identifier of the source type. Use a concise and descriptive value (max. 10 characters) like 'SERVICE', 'JOB', 'TRANSPORT', etc.
Processing Codeunit No.	Enter the number of the codeunit that processes planning data coming from Dime.Scheduler into Business Central.
Appointment Template Code	In Dime.Scheduler, you can define custom fields on an appointment card. You can have different fields based on the type of task using an appointment template. Specify the appointment template code for the task, based on the source type. For more information about appointment templates refer to this doc.
Action Report No.	The report to run when the user selects an action URI for this source type. Leave 0 (zero) to use the standard report DS Action Launch. The report parses the parameters passed by Dime.Scheduler as field filters and then launches the defined codeunit (see below)
Action New Description	Action new is the URI shown when the user opens the context menu in the planning board. The description or caption is shown to the user.
Action New Codeunit No.	The codeunit executed by the report defined in Action Report No.
Action Edit Description	Action Edit is the URI shown when the user opens the context menu of an appointment with matching source app and source type fields. The description or caption is shown to the user.
Action Edit Codeunit No.	The codeunit executed by the report defined in Action Report No.

The action or command button "Send Action URI" generates and sends the ActionURI to Dime.Scheduler for both 'Action New' and 'Action Edit' if a value is entered in the respective description field.

Diagram

The diagram below summarizes how the integration framework between Dime.Scheduler and Business Central fits together.

It starts in Business Central, where users create orders that need to be planned in Dime.Scheduler. Each record sent from BC carries a Source App and Source Type field. The Source App is always the same and comes from the configuration item in the FastTrack wizard, while the Source Type typically differs across the various tables in play.

When an appointment is planned, Dime.Scheduler sends this information back to whichever systems want to be notified. You configure this on the Connectors page in Dime.Scheduler. Once Dime.Scheduler has deposited the appointment info in the backoffice system, it's that system's job to process it. You can use the standard connectors that Dime Software has developed, or your own logic.

The standard connector for Dime.Scheduler in Business Central supports multiple tables, which is where the Source Type comes in. Dime.Scheduler posts all planning lines to the Dime.Scheduler Appointments table in Business Central and triggers a workflow that looks up the matching source type and invokes the corresponding code unit to write back to the right table.