We just released version 8.4 of the Visual Scheduling Add-in Developer Toolbox (VSADT). The VSADT with AL-API lets you develop a customized planning board for your specific industry solution within Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. This minor release contains the following enhancements and improvements:
Visualization of Baseline Constraint Dates
It is now possible to display release date and due dates for the baseline of activities. They get visible by showing symbols besides the baseline bar below the main activity bar in the activities view. By default, the symbols used are the same as the ones for displaying the release and due dates but can be changed. If the default diamond symbol is used, it inherits the color of the baseline bar, but that can be changed as well.
Tooltips with Interactive Content
Tooltips optionally now can be entered with the pointer and therefore can be used interactively without causing the tooltip to disappear. This interactivity is enabled by the new IsInteractive property on TooltipTemplate objects
Outside Texts also on Allocation Bars
For greater flexibility in labeling allocation bars, it is now possible to place texts outside the bars, as already known for activity bars. These texts can be positioned above and below the bar by using the new properties BarBottomOutsideText and BarTopOutsideText for Allocation objects. The text is automatically clipped at the date where another allocation bar starts in the same horizontal position. To maintain readability against the background of the diagram, you can customize their color using the properties BarTopOutsideTextColor and BarBottomOutsideTextColor.
Additional Properties with Modifier Keys in Events
When an application wants to modify its handling of a click or a drag&drop operation, the new properties PointerType, AltKey, CtrlKey, MetaKey, and ShiftKey enable this. They are provided with the events OnClicked, OnDoubleClicked, OnDragEnd, and OnDrop. They are taken from the original browser’s DOM event object if available.
Miscellaneous
Disabling Drag&Drop
It is now possible to disable drag&drop functionality separately for rows and bars. Until now, this could be done by the setting Editable only for both together.
Coloring of Time Area Background
You can now easily synchronize the background color of the time area with that of the table. To support this, a new property TableColorVisibleInTimeArea has been introduced for Activity, Resource, and Skill objects. This enhances visual consistency across the diagram.
Easier and Faster Removal of Objects
The new method RemoveAllOfTypes allows the removal of all objects of multiple types in one call by passing an array of object types. VSADT now automatically optimizes the removal sequence internally to achieve maximum performance.
Displaying Free Capacity on Curve Tooltips
In addition to showing capacity and load values using tooltip templates on curve tooltips, you can now display the available free capacity as well. This is done by including the keyword #FreeCapacity in your tooltip definition.
Simplified Access to Overflowing Symbols in the Symbol Column
Previously, when a row’s symbol column contained more symbols than could fit, users had to click the “…” icon to view them. Now, hovering the mouse over the symbol column is sufficient to reveal all hidden symbols.
Graphics and Semantics of Collapse and Expand Button
The visual appearance of collapse and expand buttons in the table rows has been slightly adjusted for better clarity. This is especially an improvement for the buttons for allocation rows, that showed a different semantics than the other buttons in the past. Now they behave identically.
Performance Enhancements
To improve loading speed, the internal processing of calendar and period highlighter data is now deferred until these elements become visible on the screen. This results in more responsive initial rendering, especially in large datasets.
Features in previous releases