What’s new

TE Preferences 1.4.0 is a major release with the below main focus areas;

Improved form viewer
Group management support
Creation of activity templates

1. Improved form Viewer

The form viewer, meaning the page the person filling out the form is facing has been restructured. The form information and the actual form “filling” has been separated into different tabs. The reason is to give the submitter a more pedagogic and structured experience when he or she first enters the page.

Information and status

The first tab in the new form viewer is “information and status”. This contains information regarding the from name, description, due date and form period. Further it contains the status and progress of the form with the aim to give the submitter an overview of the process.

The scheduling statuses are set in the activity manager in TE Core and will be available to the submitter once the form is submitted.

Primary object

The second tab in the new form viewer is where the submitter selects the primary object for the form, meaning the object which the preferences are collected for. There is a small description of “What is a primary object” which can be expanded or collapsed by the form submitter.

The selected primary object will also be rendered in the left side menu at all time when the person is filling out the form.

Form

The last tab in the new form viewer is where the actual “form filling” takes place and it corresponds to the form design made by the Preferences administrator.

2. Group management support

The group management is all about making sure the right groups, and the right amount of groups, are linked to the correct activity. Furthermore, that this can be handled in an automated way. For example, the teaching kind “seminar” should be held in 2 parallel groups, but the teaching kind “lab” should held in 5 parallel groups.

Settings

In order to use the group management feature this has to be enabled in the settings in the form designer. The settings are linked to both the table section and the calendar section. Once the group management is enabled, the form designer can select an object type which works as a regular datasource.

In order to allow the submitter to create new objects, i.e new groups - enable the toggle option.

Group management in the form viewer

When the settings for group management is enabled in the form designer, the tab for “Group manager” will be available in the form viewer. From here the submitter can search to find the correct groups and select them by checking the checkboxes. The selected groups will be available to use across the form. The total amount of selected groups is rendered in the top of the page, “6 groups selected” in the below example.

In order for the submitter to “add group”, meaning add new groups, the settings to allow the submitter to create new groups must be enabled in the form designer. If enabled, the submitter can create as many groups as required.

Once the groups are selected, the submitter can fill out the form as usual. When an activity should be held in parallel groups, click on the icon for “Tracks”. This will open a new dialog where the submitter can add as many tracks as preferred and connect the certain groups to each track. From here, the submitter can also edit the number of groups selected in the previous step by clicking “edit groups”.

When tracks are added to a certain activity they will be rendered below the main row in the table (both table section and calendar section). To view the tracks, use the expand button “>” to the far left in the table.

3. Creation of activity templates

The aim of the activity templates is to speed up the process of submitting a form. The idea is that if the submitter invests some time in setting up the templates, and pre-determine the field values for each activity type, the actual form filling will be done in no time at all.

Settings

In order to use the activity template feature this has to be enabled in the settings in the form designer. The settings are linked to both the table section and the calendar section. Once the activity templates is enabled, the form designer can select an object type which works as a regular datasource.

In order to allow the submitter to create new activity types - enable the toggle option.

Activity templates in the form viewer

When the settings for activity templates is enabled in the form designer, the tab for “Activity Templates” will be available in the form viewer. From here the submitter can pre-define the field values for a certain activity type and by this create templates.

Step 1: Select activity type. The available objects are dependent on the object type configured in the form designer.

Step 2: Select field values for the certain activity type.

Step 3: Create as many activity templates as preferred, advantageously for the recurring activity types.

Step 4: Link activity type to groups and tracks by clicking the button “add track”. Example, if the activity type is “seminar” and it should be held in 2 parallel groups, add two tracks and link the certain groups to each track.

Step 5: Fill out the form. Click on “Add activity” and select an activity template in the dropdown list. All the filed values and tracks will be pre-filled based on the template. If the submitter only configures activity templates for e.g two activity types, all are available if selecting “show all” in the dropdown list.

Step 6: Make exceptions from the templates by simply changing any preferred filed value. The activity will be marked with an asterisk * to indicate the exception.

Improvements

Object request for primary object
It is now possible to make object requests for primary objects, enabled in the form settings page. In the case the submitter doesn’t find the correct primary object, he or she can add it as an object request which will be handled by the administrator in the activity manager.
Step length in a duration element
Step length has been added as a setting to the duration element. This means that the submitter is limited to a certain step length for the activities, e.g 15 minutes. When using the arrows up and down the value will change in accordance with the step length.
Indication for drag and drop
The feature to drag and drop activities in both the table section and the calendar section has been available for quite some time, but in order to remind the submitter of this feature, a “drag and drop” icon has been added to each table row.
Add multiple activities
There is a new button in the table section named “Add multiple activities”. This feature let the submitter add multiple rows in one go. If activity templates are configured, this can also be linked to a certain template.