Scheduler
- 6 minutes to read
The MVCxScheduler extension consists of multiple components including the Scheduler and Date Navigator, as well as smaller data editors used in built-in dialogs.
This topic covers the features that are specific to MVCxScheduler. To learn about features that are common to the MVC Extensions library, refer to the MVC Main Features and Common Concepts topics.
Built-In Date Views (5 in All)
- Day view - Provides the most detailed view of appointments for a particular day.
- Work Week view - Displays appointments for work days in a particular week.
- Week view - Displays appointments for any given weekly period.
- Month view (Multi-Week view) - The month view is the least detailed view, and is designed to allow your end-users to view long-term plans.
- Timeline view - Displays appointments as horizontal bars along a timescale, and provides end-users with a clear overview for scheduling purposes.
Date Navigator Control
- Scheduler synchronization and view auto-select - Display selected dates in a bound scheduler that automatically switches to the appropriate view.
- Week numbers - Show or hide week numbers.
- Highlight dates with appointments in bold - Optional bold mark-up for dates that have appointments assigned to them.
- Multiselect - Select multiple consecutive dates (days, weeks, etc.) or multiple random dates, and display them together in the scheduler.
Appointment Capabilities
- Status representation - Four different time display options for the day view (including appointments that span multiple days).
- Label representation - Eleven appointment colors to indicate an appointment’s type/importance.
- Buttons for hidden appointments - Buttons indicating that additional appointments exist, but don’t fit into the screen area. Clicking a button switches the current view to a more detailed view to show all appointments. These buttons are called “more” buttons, and can be clicked to scroll to the next/previous appointment.
- Recurrence - Recurring appointments are an important part of any scheduling application, and many recurring appointments can be created from a single recurrence pattern.
- Reminders - An appointment can contain a reminder that is responsible for sending alerts at a specified time before an appointment’s start time.
- Show time as clock - Show appointment start and end times as digital or analog clocks.
- Start and End time suppression - Optional suppression of the start and end times of appointments.
- Conflict checking - The scheduler can resolve appointment conflicts by either prohibiting or allowing them.
Data Binding
- Binding to a data source - The scheduler is designed to function in bound mode only. It can easily be bound to any Model data passed by a Controller.
- Binding custom fields to an appointment - The default data fields used to manage appointments do not represent all of the data an appointment can hold. You can specify as many fields as you need. If you specify custom fields, you can allow your end-users to modify field values via custom dialogs, or initialize these fields in code.
Multiple Resource Display
- Group by date - Appointments can be grouped by their dates.
- Group by resource - Appointments can be grouped by their resources.
- Resource images - Any picture can be bound to a resource so that it will be shown in its header.
- Resource scrolling - If the number of resources shown on a screen within the scheduler makes it difficult to see all of the scheduled data at once, you can limit the number of resources and scroll the resources as required. The ResourceNavigator control is designed for this purpose. It is embedded in the SchedulerControl and displayed when required.
- Resource sharing - The same appointment can be assigned to several resources. This appointment will be displayed on all timelines corresponding to the linked resources.
End-User Capabilities
- Resizing and moving appointments - The scheduler provides an easy-to-use appointment arrangement mechanism, with full support for resizing and moving appointments.
- Built-in popup menus - The scheduler implements a number of built-in context menus that are similar to those found in Microsoft Outlook. All of these menus are controlled by the scheduler’s properties, which allow you to disable specific items or substitute a menu with your own menu.
- Built-in dialogs - The scheduler control provides a complete UI for your application, integrating all of the dialogs needed by end users to navigate and edit their schedules. You will not have to spend any extra time providing features for switching between views, editing resource layouts or modifying the content of appointments. Note that you can customize these dialogs as required.
Appearance and UI Customization
- Appearances - A powerful mechanism to control the look and feel of the scheduler. You can customize the appearance of almost any visual element. The scheduler also ships with a number of predefined themes.
- Custom templates for visual elements and dialogs - You can customize the appearance or layout completely using any HTML content.
- Custom in-place editor - You can implement a custom editor form and use this form as an in-place editor for appointments. This means that end-users will see your custom form instead of a simple subject editor. The custom form will automatically be resized to fit the appointment being edited.
- Full CSS Support - The appearance of the scheduler can be customized using CSS classes. This approach is recommended if you need centralized control over the appearance of several controls or the entire site.
- End-user restrictions - You can prohibit end-users from performing certain actions such as creating, moving, resizing or copying scheduled appointments.
- Limit accessible time interval - The scheduler allows you to set a specific date range. If a date range is set, end-users cannot access dates outside the specified interval.
Reporting (printing via XtraReports)
- Reporting - provides a flexible way to construct print styles for the scheduler data. It utilizes the XtraReports Suite to create a report containing controls that have been specially designed to represent scheduler entities. Several Scheduler Report controls and the full set of XtraReports controls can be combined in one report to accomplish a complicated task. You can load report templates that were previously saved, and preview and export reports to various formats (including PDF and BMP).