Profiles & Layouts
ProfilesProfileA saved snapshot of a user’s planning board configuration, including the chosen layout and view options. and layoutsLayoutA saved arrangement of the planning board - visible resources, columns, and settings - that can be reused. let users build personalized workspaces and share them with other users and user groupsUser groupA container that coalesces users so security, profiles and layouts can be managed and shared for the whole group at once.. They are a fundamental part of what makes Dime.Scheduler flexible, and they encourage collaboration because a workspace set up by one planner can be reused by the whole team.
A profile captures everything needed to recreate the user interface and its behavior after initialization. Think of it as a snapshot of the planning view's structure. It stores many settings, including but not limited to:
- Color
- Theme
- Sidebar menu collapsed state
- Dock panels and their position, width, height and the default layout of the component that is contained inside
- Planning boardPlanning boardThe main graphical scheduling surface where dispatchers drag tasks onto resources across a timeline. presets
- Map presets
- ...and many more
Layouts, by contrast, are tightly coupled to components. A layout is a snapshot of a single component: it holds the data needed to turn that component into a reusable template, so it can be applied by other users or in other profiles. It stores many settings, including but not limited to:
- Column selection
- Column width
- Sorting
- Filtering
- ...and many more
Keep in mind that layouts and profiles never store transactional data. They only store the settings that make sense for that component or profile. In that respect they are very similar, but as the next section shows, they differ in scope and context.
Layouts versus profiles
Profiles and layouts look similar at first, but they serve two different functions. A profile is a snapshot of the planning view, while a layout is a snapshot of a single component within that view. A layout therefore has a much smaller scope: it deals with component settings like column selection, sorting, and filtering.
The example below makes this concrete. The area with the red border is profile territory; the blue area is managed by layouts:
Layouts only become relevant to profiles during profile initialization, because users can mark default layouts for their components inside a profile:
A default layout is the glue between profiles and layouts: without it, the two have no meaningful connection. Default layouts tell Dime.Scheduler which components have which layouts for which profiles. When a profile loads, its (optional) default layouts are applied. If a component has no default layout, it falls back to the standard layout defined by Dime. As with profiles, users can always change a component's settings (or load other layouts) during the session.
A layout is scoped to a single instance of a component. Every component in the view can have its own settings, no matter how many other instances of the same component the profile contains. It is common to have several open taskOpen taskA task that has not been scheduled yet. It waits in the open task list to be placed on the planning board. grids in one profile with different filters, for example to split the data by region, customer, or order status.
Because layouts are snapshots of components, they can be reused in other profiles, and even by other users in their own profiles. Any combination of layouts and profiles is possible. Profiles record which components are captured, where they sit in the view, and which default layouts are defined. The schema below illustrates this: the left column shows the layouts grouped by component type, and the right column shows the contents of two profiles, also grouped by component type.
Layouts and profiles live in two separate catalogs: one for profiles and one for layouts. In this example, the planners have defined a few layouts for the open and planned tasks components to show records from the EMEA region and the LATAM region. In the second profile (orange), not every component has a default layout, so Dime.Scheduler applies the standard layout for the details, map, and notification components.
This system is efficient because it lets you reuse settings across profiles and users. Rather than loading the layout each time you start Dime.Scheduler, flag the record as the default layout for the profile and let it apply automatically.
When this profile is applied, the 'Tasks LATAM' layout is applied automatically to this component instance, and the same happens for every other component in the profile. When you create a new profile later, you can reuse the layouts you built earlier as well as the ones shared by other users.
Users versus profiles
It helps to be clear on the difference between a user and a profile, and how they relate. As explained under users and user groups, a user is the physical person who operates the application 1.
One thing a user can produce is a profile: a workspace configured to tackle a specific planning scenario. You might drop a few components, add others, and apply different filters to suit the task at hand. Rather than rebuilding that workspace every time the application launches, the user can save it, along with a set of other settings, to a profile.
Note that security filters are applied to the user running the profile, not to the profile itself. The profile is a template that runs in the context of a user session, so what each user of a profile sees is determined by their own security clearance.
Authorization
Manage layouts and profiles
Not everyone can create, update, delete, and load profiles. To store profiles and layouts, a user needs the "Personalization" user actionUser actionA single protected capability, such as 'edit appointment', that a role can grant. The building block of role-based access control.. When that user action is missing from all of their roles, the user can only load layouts.
Even an authorized user only sees the profiles shared publicly or with a user group they belong to. Profiles they did not create cannot be overwritten or deleted, but they can serve as the basis for a new profile. It works like a read-only Word document: you can only save it as a new document.
Data
Sharing a profile or layout does not share its authorization levels. The data-driven security and role-based access control mechanisms stay in place. Profiles and layouts only carry settings that ensure a consistent look and feel; they play no part in deciding which data a user sees or what they can do with it.