How Does The Drag & Drop Calendar Work?
Drag & Drop
The new drag & drop calendar is very much like the calendar feature that Studio Helper has had for years, with a few changes.
Week View
In the picture below, you can see the default calendar, which shows one week at a time, is pretty much the same as it has been.
All of the same buttons work in the same way to switch between the different views of the calendar, change to the previous and next date range for the view you're on, and the "Today" shortcut to show the current date. The sidebar options still work the same way it always has, and adding and editing events can be done the same way as before.
Drag & Drop Rescheduling
What isn't as easy to see in the picture above are the drag & drop functions. In the series of pictures below, you can see how dragging a calendar event from one day/time slot to another.
In the first picture, the process starts by using your mouse to click on the event you want to change and hold down the mouse button.
In the second picture, while holding down the mouse button, use your mouse to drag the event from the original position to the position that matches the day/time you want to change it to.
In the third picture, you can see the confirmation dialog that pops up after moving an event that is part of a repeating series. This works the same as if you had clicked on the event and clicked the Edit link, made a change, and then saved the changes.
Only this instance - Clicking this button will save the changes for only the specific event that was dragged to the new position on the calendar view.
All events in this series - Clicking this button will save the changes for the event you dragged, and all of the other events in this repeating series. If the event was dragged to a different day of the week, the repeating options in the series will reflect the new day of the week. Be aware that this will make changes to past events in the series, and not just future ones.
All following - Clicking this button will save the changes for the event you dragged, and all of the events in the series that come after that one. If the event was dragged to a different day of the week, the repeating options in the series will reflect the new day of the week.
Cancel - Clicking this button will close the dialog, no changes will be made, and the event will return to the original position on the calendar view.
Drag & Drop Duration
In the first picture, hovering your mouse over the bottom border of the event will highlight the drag handle and turn the mouse pointer into a doubled-headed arrow. Click your mouse and drag the border up to decrease the duration, down to increase the duration.
In the second picture, after dragging the border to the desired duration, release the mouse button to complete the action.
In the third picture, once again you can see the confirmation dialog that pops up when you perform this action with an event that is part of a repeating series.
Month View
One of the new additions to the calendar is the Month View. The picture below shows what this new view looks like.
Because a busy studio can have a very large number of events in a given day, the month view shows each day in a compact view. You can get more events to show by using a smaller font size than what is shown above, but if there are more events on a given date than what will fit in the space, there will be a link to click that says how many more events are scheduled for that date (+3 more and +2 more in the picture above). When you click on that link, a small box will open up showing a list of all of the events scheduled for that date. If the list is too long to fit in the window, there are scroll bars to make it easy to see them all. Clicking on an event in this list has the same function as if the event was clicked on in any other calendar view, as shown below.
You can see that the new drag & drop calendar uses the same popup that we've always used to show additional details about the event. Everything here works just the same as it always has, and it let's you Edit, Delete, or Cancel the event from this popup.
You'll notice that the Month view doesn't have any time increments. Showing a full month at once, with all of the available times for the studio, is extremely cluttered, and would require a huge amount of scrolling just to go from one week to the next. We've made efforts to make this view as compact as possible, while still providing a useful tool for managing your studio's busy schedule. Because of the lack of time increments, it's not possible to drag and drop in this view to change the time or duration of an event. But you can still use it to change the date of an event and to change the day of the week for a repeating series, as demonstrated in the first part of this article.
Day View
In the picture below, you can see that the Day view has not really changed. this view allows the same drag and drop options as the Week view. Both the Week and Day views show a visual indication of when the studio is available, as defined in the Studio Availability Settings.
As you can see by the labels in the picture, the shaded area shows times when the Studio Availability Settings indicate the studio is closed; while the white area shows times when the Studio Availability Settings indicate the studio is open. These areas will show different times on different days if the Settings for the Studio Availability are set for different times on different days.
Agenda and Location Views
The pictures below show samples of the Agenda view and the Location view. The Agenda view does not support dragging and dropping, but the Location view supports the same kind of drag and drop functionality as the Week view, except that dragging to a different column changes the location of the event, and not the day of the event.
Teacher View
The Teacher view of the calendar is shown below, and it has a few changes made to it that are worth pointing out.
In the picture above, you can see that we've added some text to the header of each column. This text identifies the teacher's availability for the date being viewed, as defined in the teacher's profile. If the teacher has not enabled the availability settings in their profile, this is indicated as well. This is very useful if you want to see quickly what times are available for a specific teacher, without having to open that teacher's profile to see what is set on the availability tab. Use this when you're scheduling a student with a teacher for the first time, for example, or if you need to change the teacher assigned to a lesson because the regular teacher is going to be unavailable for that date. The drag and drop function works for this, too, on the Teacher view, and if you change the teacher for an event that is part of a repeating series, you have the same confirmation options that are given on other views, so you can permanently reassign a whole series of repeating events from one teacher to another one by simply dragging an event from one teacher's column to the other teacher's column, and then selecting to apply the changes to All events in the series, or to all following, for example, if a teacher leaves your studio and a new one has been hired to to take over that teacher's schedule.
Attendance Indicators
One thing that the different views all have in common is how attendance statuses are displayed. If an attendance status is configured to use a strike through font, this will be used on the various views (including the agenda view). For attendance statuses that are configured to be Not Billable, the font used to display the title will be italicized. You can see some examples in the pictures below.
For events with more than one student participant, if all of the students have the same attendance status, this will be reflected in how the title is displayed. But, if the students do not all have the same attendance status, the statuses are now shown in the event popup, displayed for the individual students, and shown in the picture above. Each student will be displayed according to whether that student's attendance uses a strike through font, or with the use of italicized fonts for statuses that are not billable.
Sidebar Options
No changes have been made to the sidebar options. You can still use the smaller navigation calendar to find specific dates more quickly; and, as always, a wildly cluttered calendar can be tamed by using the appropriate filter options.To get answers to your questions, or to get help with anything regarding the Studio Helper software, you can contact us by email sent to support@studiohelper.com. We're always eager to help, in any way that we can. You can also send us any feedback you might have about this, or any other feature, by using the same email address. Our support and development teams work very closely together, and our ultimate goal is to provide the best software for your studio management needs.