Custom Fields

The Corporate and Enterprise Pack versions of connectDaily support creating User-defined fields. Using a simple wizard web page, you can define your own data fields for input. You can associate those Custom Fields with all calendars or one specific calendar. For example, you could create Fields like # Chairs, # Tables, Coffee Service (Y/N) for the Setup and Teardown calendar. People can put in this information when they create a setup and teardown entry.

The Basics

To get started, click on the Toolbox Icon and choose Edit Custom Fields. Click on the add icon or button to begin defining Custom Fields.

The Custom Field Wizard tab will allow you to define your Fields. You can specify what kind of data is in the Field and the caption for your Field.

Once you've created your custom fields, save changes and select the Calendars tab to associate your new custom field set with your calendar.

What It Can Do

When you create a Field, you can specify what kind of data is accepted. For example, you can create a Field and configure it to be a date value. When an event is created, the program will check that the value entered was a date. You can specify value types of:

• Integer (whole number)
• Double (number with a decimal point, including currency)
• Dates
• Logical (Y/N)
• Character
• Email Address
• Time
• URL

You can also specify whether a value is required. If you mark the Field as required, then the User will be forced to input a value in order to save the event.

What It Can't Do

The Bad News - When you add a Field, connectDaily will not automatically do something with it. For example, you can't create an event priority field and have connectDaily automatically EMail someone when an event with high priority is created.

The Good News - If you really need to be able to do customized handling of events, the Custom Field feature allows programmers to create their own custom hooks into connectDaily. Some of the capabilities are:

• Custom event hooks at the browser level.
• Custom CSS Classes for formatting of input elements.
• Dropdown lookups from any database.
• Custom Selection dialogs to search your own internal databases.
• Before and After update hooks that allow you to write your own code that gets called when a calendar event is saved.

These are advanced capabilities that will require software development skills. The documentation for this is contained in the connectDaily Source Code Guide. The Source Code Guide is available upon request for no additional fee.

If you don't have a development staff, MH Software, Inc. can work with you to create a custom input solution to meet your needs.