In this minor update of Dime.Scheduler, we added a few improvements to the planning board and planned tasks grid. We are also happy to announce compatibility with Azure SQL database.
New features
Highlight selected planned tasks in the planning board
Locating a planned task on the planning board was already possible but we expanded the scope of this feature to allow users to highlight a range of planned tasks in the planning board and treat them as an isolated group of appointments.
Emphasize the selected appointment's date in the timeline
When a cell or appointment is selected in the planning board, the header in the timeline is accentuated.
Authentication update of the CRM connector
There are a few authentication mechanisms to make a connection with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. An authentication type that was recently added is the one with client credentials. By using a client id and secret, applications are able to communicate with each other without having to enter (or store) a user name and password. We updated our connector to support this new authentication type.
Improvements and bug fixes
Besides the traditional performance and stability improvements, the following bugs have been fixed:
- Show all resources in the resource type editor combobox
- A resource type is now a required field for the resource type
- Task container dates are localized when tasks are broadcasted to the users
- Database upgrade track from Dime.Scheduler 2016 to Dime.Scheduler 2019.5.0 and beyond
We also made a small improvement in which the connected components are cleared when the planning board is refreshed.
Dime.Scheduler on Azure
Over the years, we have developed heaps of features for the users. Since Dime.Scheduler was released on a brand new tech stack in 2017, very little efforts have been made to improve the deployment and hosting process. This is about to change because we are working on a cloud-based version of Dime.Scheduler. As promised earlier, more details will follow shortly.
The first step in our journey towards the cloud is to be able to run our databases on Azure SQL. There are a few ways in which databases can be hosted on Azure, as this article explains rather excellently. Before the release of Dime.Scheduler 2019.6.0, all options but Azure SQL (the PaaS service) were already supported. We are happy to announce support for Azure SQL databases. We recommend this option as it is the most specialized service which requires the least amount of configuration. It also happens to be the cheapest option, incidentally.
SQL Server support update
While we are on the subject of databases, in accordance with Microsoft's lifecycle policy regarding SQL Server, we do no longer support SQL Server 2008. The minimum supported version is SQL Server 2012. To have an overview of the supported versions, check this article.
Update of the documentation
The user manual is now available in German. You can switch languages by selecting a value in the languages section next to the search bar in the top menu.
What's next
We will finish the remaining work to make the advanced filters complete. We also aim to release a stable single tenant, cloud-based version of Dime.Scheduler in Q1 2020.