Catalog Item Date/DateTime Variables, Date Ranges, and Calendar Invites

[Tamara11]

Hi,

I hope everyone is well.

I'm seeking ideas for collecting dates and times in catalog items.  I know about the Date and DateTime variables, but I guess I'm not creative enough to use them to their full potential.

Specifically, how to collect ranges of dates and times.  An event, for example, might consist of one day 3-4PM, while another might consist of multiple days with varying start/end times for each day.

It seems that, when I use a datetime variable, users just select the date and leave the time picker at whatever it populates when they opened it.  That causes problems for event support.

To allow users to include multiple days, I made a multirow variable set containing a day variable, start_time/end_time select boxes with choices representing 15 minute increments from 8am-midnight, and hidden startdt/enddt datetime variables that I use an onchange script to populate with the date + start/end_time.  It's not elegant and doesn't look fantastic, but it will work...  except ...

I need to send calendar invites for each of the events' days.  All of the discussion that I've found for accomplishing this involves mapping fields, which doesn't look possible for variables on multi-row variable sets.

Can anyone offer any tips for dealing with dates/times and scheduling in catalog items or share creative ways they've managed collecting dates?

Thanks for any insight you can share.

[Tamara11]

Ok.  Here's what I'm thinking of trying...

I'll loop through the mrvs in the workflow and use the create event activity to trigger an event like change.calendar.notify for each record in the mrvs.

This is going to involve creating a new event in the event registry - using the change.calendar.notify event as a guide.

Which means I'll have to make a business rule - using the change events business rule as a guide.

Then I'll make a notification like Notify Event Calendar, and see if I can use the same underlying templates and just change the event.

What do you think? Will this work?  Is there a better way?