Recreating the My Bookings and Tasks view using Calendar Controls in the Unified Interface

One useful piece of functionality in Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation (PSA) is the My Bookings and Tasks view. This view gives resources a quick and easy way to view information that is only related to them, rather than having to go through the clicks of navigating to the schedule board and searching for themselves. 

Currently in version 3.2 of PSA, this view hasn't been moved over from the legacy client. This makes it a great example as to how we can use custom controls in the unified interface to replicate this functionality through your own customisation. 

Using the Calendar Control

There are various custom controls now available to us in D365, and one of these is the calendar control. Providing your record is time-based, the calendar control allows you to depict a view as a calendar. So in this example, your view will be 'My Project Tasks' and 'My Bookable Resource Bookings', giving the resource a holistic view of everything they have planned for the month. 


The first step is to ensure you have a view with the correct filter criteria, otherwise it will pull incorrect data. To do this, I am going to take a copy of the out of the box 'Active Bookable Resource Bookings' view, and change the filter criteria.

The key thing I need to specify is that the booking relates to my bookable resource and the status does not equal cancelled. Therefore I need to set the criteria as seen below whereby the user linked to my resource equals the current user and the status is not cancelled.

Now that I have my criteria specified, I can change this view to show as a calendar by adding the control. You can do this by navigating to your view and clicking Custom Controls.

Click Add Control.

Select the Calendar Control and click Add.

Now you've added the control, you need to specify which field values will be used to display records on the calendar i.e. Start Time should be taken from the Start Time field on the Bookable Resource Booking. Do this by selecting the icon as per below.

Then choose the values you want to map. 

Fill in the remaining values that need mapping and click OK. 

Also ensure that the calendar control is the one that is set to default.

Now I've set up my calendar control, I need to add this to the unified interface. I need to start by adding the Bookable Resource Booking entity and Project Task entity to the Project Resource Hub sitemap (which is a unified interface app). 

I also made sure only the My Active Bookings view and My Project Tasks would be the only views available by amending the Project Resource Hub app designer.

After saving and publishing, I navigated to the Project Resource Hub and there you have it. Both entities now only show the relevant views and default to the calendar, rather than the standard read only grid view.

Summary

This is just one example of how the calendar control could be used, as you can see it allows us to improve the user's experience and extend functionality, adding a huge amount of value to what we can do with standard customisation in D365. This example is a fairly basic and relatively quick piece of customisation, yet it replicates a considerable piece of custom development in earlier versions of PSA.