CRM 2013 : How can I Schedule Concurrent Appointments (using Appointment & RecurringAppointmentMaster entities)? - dynamics-crm

Question

We have a plugin that uses the BookRequest & RescheduleRequest Methods to schedule Appointment & RecurringAppointmentMaster entities.
Recently I was tasked with implementing the ability to schedule multiple appts in a given timeslot.
So in researching this, I found some posts referring to resource capacity (in work hours) & setting the Effort field of the ActivityParty to 1.0 in the Appointment.
I thought, great this will be easy.
So I changed the plugin to store the effort:
activityParty = new Entity("activityparty");
activityParty["partyid"] = new EntityReference("systemuser", apptCaregiverId);
activityParty["effort"] = (Double)1.0;
But when I ran the code, the BookRequest returned this error that confused me: ErrorCode.DifferentEffort
I searched for ErrorCode.DifferentEffort, 2139095040, BookRequest, you name it found nothing useful.
What exactly does this error mean?
Why is it so difficult to schedule concurrent appointments in CRM?

Answer 1

This is what I learned the hard way, so maybe it will spare someone else some frustration.
I looked in the database & noticed that the activityparty entities associated with appointments all had the effort field set to 2139095040 and I wondered where that number was coming from? In a post unrelated to CRM, I found out the 2139095040 means 'positive infinity'.
I revisited the posts where they talk about setting the effort to 1.0 & realized that they were all referring to the ServiceAppointment entity (not Appointment) and then I finally stumbled on the list of error codes
Scheduling Error Codes
DifferentEffort = The required capacity of this service does not match the capacity of resource {resource name}.
Not exactly the truth, but whatever.
The real issue is the Appointment entity does not reference a Service, therefore the capacity of the non-existent service is ‘Positive Infinity’ (2139095040).
Setting the Effort equal to anything but 2139095040 throws this error.
It isn’t really checking the capacity of the resource here, it’s just saying that the non-existent service capacity must be = 2139095040
Anyway to get around this I removed the logic that sets the effort = 1.0 and when BookRequest or RescheduleRequest returns ErrorCode.ResourceBusy, I check the Capacity vs the # appts scheduled in that timeslot & if there is capacity left over, I force it to overbook by using Create or Update.
private Guid BookAppointment(Entity appointment, bool setState, out List<string> errors)
{
Guid apptId = Guid.Empty;
try
{
BookRequest request = new BookRequest
{
Target = appointment
};
BookResponse booked = (BookResponse)this.orgService.Execute(request);
apptId = ParseValidationResult(booked.ValidationResult, setState, appointment, true, out errors);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
errors = new List<string> { ex.GetBaseException().Message };
}
return apptId;
}
private Guid RescheduleAppointment(Entity appointment, out List<string> errors)
{ // used to reschedule non-recurring appt or appt in recurrence
Guid apptId = Guid.Empty;
try
{
RescheduleRequest request = new RescheduleRequest
{
Target = appointment
};
RescheduleResponse rescheduled = (RescheduleResponse)this.orgService.Execute(request);
apptId = ParseValidationResult(rescheduled.ValidationResult, false, appointment, false, out errors);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
errors = new List<string> { ex.GetBaseException().Message };
}
return apptId;
}
private Guid ParseValidationResult(ValidationResult result, bool setState, Entity appointment, Boolean addNew, out List<string> errors)
{
Guid apptId = result.ActivityId;
errors = new List<string>();
if (result.ValidationSuccess == true)
{
if (setState == true)
{
SetStateRequest state = new SetStateRequest();
state.State = new OptionSetValue(3); // Scheduled
state.Status = new OptionSetValue(5); // Busy
state.EntityMoniker = new EntityReference("appointment", apptId);
SetStateResponse stateSet = (SetStateResponse)this.orgService.Execute(state);
}
}
else
{
String error;
String errortxt;
Boolean overbookAppt = true;
foreach (var errorInfo in result.TraceInfo.ErrorInfoList)
{
bool unavailable = false;
if (errorInfo.ErrorCode == "ErrorCode.ResourceNonBusinessHours")
{
errortxt = "{0} is being scheduled outside work hours";
}
else if (errorInfo.ErrorCode == "ErrorCode.ResourceBusy")
{
errortxt = "{0} is unavailable at this time";
unavailable = true;
}
else
{
errortxt = "failed to schedule {0}, error code = " + errorInfo.ErrorCode;
}
Dictionary<Guid, String> providers;
Dictionary<Guid, String> resources;
DateTime start = DateTime.Now, end = DateTime.Now;
Guid[] resourceIds = errorInfo.ResourceList.Where(r => r.EntityName == "equipment").Select(r => r.Id).ToList().ToArray();
if (unavailable == true)
{
if (appointment.LogicalName == "recurringappointmentmaster")
{
start = (DateTime)appointment["starttime"];
end = (DateTime)appointment["endtime"];
}
else
{
start = (DateTime)appointment["scheduledstart"];
end = (DateTime)appointment["scheduledend"];
}
Dictionary<Guid, Boolean> availability = GetAvailabilityOfResources(resourceIds, start, end);
resourceIds = availability.Where(a => a.Value == false).Select(t => t.Key).ToArray(); // get ids of all unavailable resources
if (resourceIds.Count() == 0)
{ // all resources still have capacity left at this timeslot - overbook appt timeslot
overbookAppt = true;
} // otherwise at least some resources are booked up in this timeslot - return error
}
if (errortxt.Contains("{0}"))
{ // include resource name in error msg
if (resourceIds.Count() > 0)
{
LoadProviderAndResourceInfo(resourceIds, out providers, out resources);
foreach (var resource in providers)
{
error = String.Format(errortxt, resource.Value);
errors.Add(error);
}
foreach (var resource in resources)
{
error = String.Format(errortxt, resource.Value);
errors.Add(error);
}
}
}
else
{ // no place for name in msg - just store it
errors.Add(errortxt);
break;
}
}
if (overbookAppt == true && errors.Count() == 0)
{ // all resources still have capacity left at this timeslot & no other errors have been returned - create appt anyway
if (addNew)
{
appointment.Attributes.Remove("owner"); // Create message does not like when owner field is specified
apptId = this.orgService.Create(appointment);
if (setState == true)
{
SetStateRequest state = new SetStateRequest();
state.State = new OptionSetValue(3); // Scheduled
state.Status = new OptionSetValue(5); // Busy
state.EntityMoniker = new EntityReference("appointment", apptId);
SetStateResponse stateSet = (SetStateResponse)this.orgService.Execute(state);
}
}
else
{
this.orgService.Update(appointment);
}
}
}
return apptId;
}
private Dictionary<Guid, Boolean> GetAvailabilityOfResources(Guid[] resourceIds, DateTime start, DateTime end)
{
Dictionary<Guid, Boolean> availability = new Dictionary<Guid, Boolean>();
QueryMultipleSchedulesRequest scheduleRequest = new QueryMultipleSchedulesRequest();
scheduleRequest.ResourceIds = resourceIds;
scheduleRequest.Start = start;
scheduleRequest.End = end;
// TimeCode.Unavailable - gets appointments
// TimeCode.Filter - gets resource capacity
scheduleRequest.TimeCodes = new TimeCode[] { TimeCode.Unavailable, TimeCode.Filter };
QueryMultipleSchedulesResponse scheduleResponse = (QueryMultipleSchedulesResponse)this.orgService.Execute(scheduleRequest);
int index = 0;
TimeInfo[][] timeInfo = new TimeInfo[scheduleResponse.TimeInfos.Count()][];
foreach (var schedule in scheduleResponse.TimeInfos)
{
TimeInfo resourceCapacity = schedule.Where(s => s.SubCode == SubCode.ResourceCapacity).FirstOrDefault();
Int32 capacity = (resourceCapacity != null) ? (Int32)resourceCapacity.Effort : 1;
Int32 numAppts = schedule.Where(s => s.SubCode == SubCode.Appointment).Count();
// resource is available if capacity is more than # appts in timeslot
availability.Add(resourceIds[index++], (capacity > numAppts) ? true : false);
}
return availability;
}
This is really a better solution than setting the Effort = 1 anyway because now we don’t need a one-time on-demand workflow to update existing data.
I hope this helps save you some time if you ever need to do this.