Another day, another fairly substantial set of improvements to the Scheduler. Here’s what we’ve achieved today…

• instead of the time grid being fixed to begin at 9am, it will match the “next day hour” as set in the configuration for each festival. The “next day hour” allows you to set the time for when one festival day ends and the next begins – which, of course, will differ depending on the type of event you are. Up until now, this was only relevant for generating reports (so that, for instance, a performer who was scheduled for a 2am performance on the Sunday could be grouped with Saturday’s artists). The Scheduler now reflects how this so that there’s no confusion when booking/scheduling artists.
• the grid has been also altered to enable you to schedule performances that are 30 minutes in length (the previous limit was 60 minutes). To achieve this we’ve had to restrict the length of name displayed for each performer so that it doesn’t stretch past a single line. You can view the entire name by putting your mouse over the text.
• the Scheduler now allows you to set times in five minute increments – both starting times, and performance lengths. This means you can now set a performance that starts at 14:10 and finishes at 15:55. [The previous restriction was in 15 minute increments.]
• when you move a time block around the screen, or alter the length of a performance, the system will instantly show you the new times (although you still need to save your changes as before).
• we have also made some changes to the structure and delivery of The Scheduler code, which will improve the page loading time – and should be particularly noticeable for those users behind corporate firewalls.