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Color-coding-functionality for appointments and service activities for Group Calendar

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 17:25:00 GMT

Please note: GroupCalendar v5.58 or higher is required. The feature is available for all activity types.

GroupCalendar for MS Dynamics CRM 2011 provides the possibility to define a specific color for each scheduled service activity and appointment (click here to download the latest GroupCalendar version).

After activating this functionality in the CRM settings, GroupCalendar offers you the possibility to choose a color when scheduling a service activity or an appointment from a drop-down-menu within the service activity-/appointment-entity.

Figure 1: Option to choose color when scheduling a service activity/appointment

After you have selected the color, saved the service activity/appointment and refreshed GroupCalendar, the scheduled service activity/appointment is displayed in the previously picked color in all GroupCalendar views.

Figure 2: Scheduled appointment in previously picked color

How to activate the color-coding-functionality for appointments and service-activities?

To activate color-coding-functionality, you have to add an attribute to the main form of the service activity-/appointment-entity. The attribute is called ptm_colorcode2011 with the display name Color. It is predefined with 12 colors, but you have the possibility to add additional colors.

Please follow the simple steps below to activate the functionality.

Please note: The example below describes how to activate the color-coding-functionality for the appointment-entity.

In order to add this functionality to the service activity entity, follow the same procedure (steps 1-7) with the exception that you have to select Service Activity instead of Appointment within the customize the system-area in the CRM settings.

1. Open your CRM and go to Settings (1). Then click on Customization (2) and click on Customize the System (3)

Figure 3: CRM Settings, option to customize the system

2. Thereafter, a new CRM window opens. Within this window, click on Entities and you will get a list of all entities in your CRM system.

Figure 4: Customize entities in CRM settings

3. Now select the entity Appointment and double-click on it. Please note: If you would like to activate the color-coding-functionality for service activities, you have to select Service Activity instead of Appointment.

Figure 5: Customize appointment-entitiy

4. The settings of the appointment-entity opens. Click on Forms within the treeview on the left.

Figur 6: Settings of the appointment-entity

5. Afterwards, you get a list of the forms of the appointment-entity. Double-click on the main-form of the entity.

Figure 7: Customize the main form of the appointment-entity

6. Here, you can customize the main form of this entity. To add the color-coding-functionality, click on the color-field within the menu on the right (1) and drag and drop it into a free space. (2)

Figure 8: Add the color-coding-functionality to the main form of the entity

7. Now save and close the window and the color-drop-down-menu will appear from now on within the appointment entity when scheduling an appointment.

Please note: As already mentioned - in order to add this functionality to the service activity entity, follow the same procedure as above described in steps 1 to 7 with one exception. Instead of selecting Appointment, please select Service Activity within the Customize the System-area.

How to add additional colors?

You always have the possibility to add further colors. Before you start the color adding process, it is important that you know the hex code of the color you would like to add.

There are several free online color picker tools which help you to find out about the hex code of a specific color (e.g. http://www.colorpicker.com/).

In the following example, we would like to add a light grey color with the hex code #E0E0E0. In the steps below, we describe how to add this color to the color drop-down-menu within the appointment-entity.

Please note: The procedure is the same for every color you want to add. Also, it is the same procedure for adding a new color to the color drop-down-menu within the service activity entity instead of the appointment entity (simply select Service Activity in step 2 and ServiceAppointmentColorCode in step 8).

1. Start in the Settings-area of your CRM system, click on Customizations within the menu on the left and then select Customize the System.

Figure 9: CRM Settings, option to customize the system

2. Afterwards, click on Entities within the menu on the left and double-click on the Appointment-entity.

Please note: If you would like to add a color to the color drop-down-menu within the service activity entitiy, you have to select Service Activity within this step.

Figure 10: Customize appointment-entitiy

3. Now click on Fields in the treeview on the left (1) and double-click on the field ptm_colorcode2011. (2)

Figure 11: Customize color-code field of appointment-entity

4a. A new window opens. Within this window, click on the [Add]-button (green plus) in the Options-area (1) and type in the label of the color. In our example, we type in light grey (2). It is important that you remember the value of the color which is defined by your CRM system. In our example, the value is 100.000.000 (3).

Figure 12: Add new color

4b. After you have saved and closed the window, you have to publish the customization. To do so, please click on the [Publish all Customizations]-button.

Figure 13: Publish the customization

5. Now go back to the settings of your CRM system (1) and click on MSCRM-ADDONS.com Products. (2)

Figure 14: MSCRM-ADDONS.com products-area in CRM settings

6. Afterwards, double-click on GroupCalendar within the product list.

Figure 15: MSCRM-ADDONS.com products in CRM settings

7. A new window will open. Within this window, click on MSCRM-ADDONS.com Settingskeys within the menu on the left.

Figure 16: GroupCalendar settingskeys

8. Then, double-click on AppointmentColorCode.

Please note: If you would like to add the color to the color drop-down-menu within the service activity entity, you have to select ServiceAppointmentColorCode instead within this step.

Figure 17: Add color to AppointmentColorCode

9. A new window opens. Within this window, add your color within the KeyValue-area (1). To do so, you have to type in ‘;’ followed by the value of the color defined by CRM (In our example the value is 100.000.000. Please make sure that you tye in the vaule without '.': we, e.g., type in 100000000). Followed by ‘|’ and by the hex color code (In our example the hex code (2) is #E0E0E0).

Figure 18: Add color value and color hex code

10. Click on the [Save and Close]-button. Now, you have to close and open the browser again or to perform an IISRESET to refresh all new settings. Afterwards, you can select the added color (in our case light grey) when scheduling a new appointment from the color drop-down-menu in the appointment-entity. The appointment will be displayed in that color.

Figure 19: Select the newly added color when scheduling a new appointment

Figure 20: Scheduled appointment with newly added color

That’s it! We appreciate your feedback! Please share your thoughts by sending an email to support@mscrm-addons.com.

GroupCalendar: Color-coding for Service Activities

Thu, 27 May 2010 16:05:00 GMT

With version 4.64 you have the possibility to set up for each service activity a specific color. GroupCalendar setup will create automatically a picklist attribute on the service activity entity which is used for this feature. To activate color-coding for service activities, you have to add this attribute to the main form of the entity. The attribute is named ptm_colorcode with the display name Color and is predefined with 12 colors.

1. Open CRM and go to Settings > Customization > Customize Entities

Figure 1: Open Customize Entities

2. Open the Service Activity entity, go to Forms and Views and open the main form

Figure 2: Open the main form

3. Click on the [Add Fields]-button and select the attribute ptm_colorcode and put it on the form where you like it.

Figure 3: Select your color code

4. Now simply save and publish your customization

You can now select on each service activity with which color it should be visible in GroupCalendar. All views are supported.

Figure 4: Set color

But there is even more. You can also specify your own personal colors.

If you want to specify your own colors, please follow the below instruction on how to add an additional color.

1. Open the ptm_colorcode attribute of the service activity entity. You’ll see that there are already 12 predefined colors.
The name of the color is only the display name and says nothing about the color itself. So it is very important to know the value of the color you will edit or add, because you have to specify your colors here.

In this example the color Peach with the value 1.

Figure 5: Add new color

2. Open the GroupCalendar settings (please have a look at the installation guide on page 16 to get familiar with the GroupCalendar settings)

Please note: Each color setting is separated by ;. And each picklist value and color is separated by |.

In the example above the color Peach has the picklist value 1. So you have to find this value in the setting and after the | sign the HTML color code is defined. In the default settings the color Peach has the picklist value 1 and the value 1 is in the settings assigned to the color #FFDAB9.

So if you want to change one of the predefined colors, you first have to change the name of the picklist attribut and remember the value. Then you have to find the value in the settings and replace the color after the | sign with the HTML code of your new color.

If you want to add an additional color, you have to create a new picklist option and remember the value of the newly created option. Then you have to add this new option to the settings. Separate the new color with ;, write the picklist value followed by the | separator. Then you have to write the new HTML color code in the format #FFFFFF.

Example: you want to add the color Fuchsia. First, create a new picklist option with the name Fuchsia and remember the auto-generated value (which should be 13 in this case). Then you have to append to the setting following ;13|FF00FF. After an IISRESET the colors will be applied to GroupCalendar

If you haven't worked with GroupCalender yet, you have the possibility to download GroupCalendar here.

That's it! We appreciate your feedback! Please share your thoughts by sending and email to support@mscrm-addons.com.

How to configure different colors for activities in the Gantt View

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 08:46:00 GMT

Please note: Requires GC v4.61 or higher

There are four settings in the GC settings named

GanttColorAppointment1: Color 1 for specified appointment status codes
GanttColorAppointment2: Color 2 for specified appointment status codes
GanttColorServiceApp1: Color 1 for specified serviceappoinmtent status codes
GanttColorServiceApp2: Color 2 for specified serviceappointment status codes

The value of each setting has following format: COLORCODE|STATUSCODE,STATUSCODE,…

For example when all your appointments are blue, but you want to highlight all open appointments with a lighter blue, you could configure the following setting:

Setting Name: GanttColorAppointment1 or GanttColorAppointment2
Setting Value: #96ACF3|1,2

This will give all appointments with status code 1 and 2 (free and tentative) the color #96ACF3

Per default, all default colors will be shown. With the settings above you could just overwrite the existing color for the specified status codes.

That’s it! We appreciate your feedback! Please share your thoughts by sending an email to support@mscrm-addons.com.