RadScheduler 2010 Q2 - Possibilities/Limitations

[Alon]

Hello all,

This is more of a question of possibilities (meaning ... can I do _____ with RadScheduler?) I am not necessarily looking for a solution yet, just some good advice as I am just starting to design/develop this new feature. We are currently using Planner.Net (mindfusion.eu) for our scheduling control, but since the rest of our app is based on Telerik Controls, I was thinking of using just one component vendor.

Grouping
I need to be able to group by one of three unique fields. We can call these fields "Contact Person", "Location", or "Resource". Now I see I define my own resources to add to the collection and can group by resources. But am I able to group by other fields as well (even if I have to write some funky code)?

Custom Appointment Types
Say I have three different appointment types. The standard appointment, an appointment type that contains contact/organizer person details (name, phone number, email address), and an appointment that contains contact information for a contact person and a guest-speaker. I need to store this data in unique database fields and am unable to just put all the information in the event details. If coded properly, can the scheduler display all three appointment types and bring up the appropriate dialogs as needed?

Nested Appointments (*just a wish*)
Is there a way to nest appointments? The example would be something like ...
On Friday, 3 September, Prof. Jones has office hours from 8am to 4pm (this is the "main" appointment).
Student Stephanie has booked a meeting to discuss _____ from 8:30 to 9:30 and TA Smith has scheduled a meeting to go over midterm exams from 10:00 to 12:00. I know that I can schedule three appointments which would show an appointment scheduled for the professor, and then the two additional appointments. What I would like to display is the "blocked" time for the prof as one appointment with the other two appointments scheduled "within" that blocked time. Is there any possibility for this?

This is for a WinForms application (using DotNet 3.5 for the UI and DotNet 4.0 for the data layer). If this is possible say using the web  or WPF controls ... and I AM ABLE host them within a WinForm application then I am willing to use some funky coding techniques to get this type of functionality to be possible.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions/advice!

Alon

[Dobry Zranchev]

Hi Alon,

Thank you for writing to us and for your questions. I will be glad to address them for you:

1. The WinForms Scheduler does not provide grouping by fields, other than resource. You could group all different views but only by resource. This feature has been requested before, so I will log your vote for it as well.
    
2. Our databinding solution accepts mapping different fields, but for existing appointment properties. You could also add custom fields by inheriting the Appointment class and these fields can be also mapped to the database fields. Appointment dialogs are inheritable and you could create different dialogs to represent your appointments types.
    
3. At the moment it is not possible to nest appointments. We haven't seen this request before, but I have logged for future consideration, as this looks interesting.
    
4. Telerik ASP.NET Scheduler: You may be able to do custom grouping (other than resource) if you define your logic as a custom resource. Feel free to review the online grouping demo for information on getting started. If you have more questions regarding this implementation, please send them in the ASP.NET Scheduler Forum/Support section. The other two features are not supported in the ASP.NET Scheduler.
   Telerik WPF Scheduler: 

   1. Grouping - we support resource grouping here only. Check out the online demo and help.

   2. We do support Custom Appointment Types: Online demo and help

   3. Nesting appointments is not possible.

 
Please, write back if you have other questions or something in my answers in not clear.
 
 
Best wishes,
Dobry Zranchev
the Telerik team

[Alon]

Awesome thanks, appreciate the response.

In regards to being able to group by the resource only ... do you think a current workaround would be to change the Resource "type" based on user selection? If I were to store "Contact Person", "Location", and "Resource" in custom fields and then load the resource type with the data (one of the three previously mentioned) they would like grouped by ... kill all the appointment and then redraw them back to the screen. I realize this could be a performance hit, but would this be feasible?

And to clarify question 2, I would be able to have the custom types as well as the default appointment type draw on the same scheduler (as long as I follow the demos properly)?

Thanks Again,

Alon

[Dobry Zranchev]

Hello Alon,

Regarding your first question - this workaround might work. Please, try it and let us know of the results. We believe that this should not kill the scheduler, so you may have something that may solve this problem.

About the second question you can create a custom field that represents the type of the appointment. You can subscribe for the AppointmentFormating event of the scheduler and there you can do the changes in the AppointmentElement representation.


Kind regards,
Dobry Zranchev
the Telerik team