SitePen was contacted by FieldAware when CTO Andronikos Nedos was tasked with building a highly interactive, bespoke, work scheduler widget using Dojo. Through our consultation, it was discovered that in order to integrate all of the features required, from user-configurable zoom levels to drag-n-drop to timeline mappings to fast rendering times, a custom JavaScript widget would need to be built. From scratch. SitePen recommended that to achieve the complex requirements, this new scheduler widget should be built using dgrid. With dgrid’s open development in GitHub, a well specified API, good documentation and less bloat, FieldAware agreed with our recommendation and SitePen went to work.
At a quick glance, dgrid may not seem like an obvious choice for building a scheduler. Because our US based team of engineers built dgrid and are experts in its great flexibility and power, the SitePen team knew dgrid would be able to support the complex and highly interactive FieldAware workflow without issue. The closed beta FieldAware widget renders resources, usually engineers, on the Y axis and their jobs on the X axis. Jobs have various states and some states have a duration while others are just events. dgrid offers FieldAware a flexible and sound API, the ability to drag-n-drop, a lightweight performant implementation and optional features for touch-based devices.
Mr. Nedos tells us that dgrid has never been a limitation or an issue, even in alpha, and that FieldAware will continue to use dgrid in their scheduler widget. He is excited about eventually replacing all instances of the dojox.grid in their larger app with dgrid and is looking forward to getting dgrid working with real-time, webSockets updates in the future. When asked what he considered to be the best part of dgrid, Mr. Nedos replied “It works!”.
How are you using dgrid? We’d love to know. Contact us and tell us all about your dgrid experience. Maybe you can be the next dgrid user featured in our blog!
FieldAware is the field service management solution for small and medium businesses. It helps field service companies make more money by streamlining the service scheduling process, increasing field worker productivity, improving customer satisfaction, and generating lead opportunities in the field.