The Recurrence Widget gives the option for a user to schedule a recurring activity: an activity that repeats on different dates.
NOTE: The Recurrence Widget is only available on screens with Activity as the base table.
Recurrence Widget Properties
The recurrence widget has only two sections to configure: Settings and Style.
Settings
Caption: The text to label the widget.
☑ Hide Caption: If labeling the control for your own information but don’t want the text to show in the live screen, check this box.
Load State: The default state of the control.
Width: How wide the control is in relation to the container. For more information, see Styling Basics - Control Widths.
Style
The styling for this object only affects the caption.
Caption color
Caption size
Caption Text Align
Caption font weight
How Does a User Use the Recurrence Widget?
The recurrence widget allows a user to have an activity repeat for a set amount of times.
In the below example, taken from the Activity screen, a user can create an activity and set up whether or not the activity is recurring.
By clicking on the pencil icon, shown in the above image, the user can configure how the the activity repeats. The right side panel opens up with a dropdown with different options for repeating.
There are four options by which an activity can repeat:
Does Not Repeat
Daily
Weekly
Monthly
Yearly
For all of them, you can select a start date, a time duration, and an end date. The below image shows a side-by-side comparison of each of the types of repeats.
How Does Recurrence Work in Method?
Every activity, regardless of whether or not it is recurring, has a field called Recurrence Type. The below image shows a customized view of the Activities app with the Recurrence Type field (you will not normally find this field on the grid).
Only two types are being shown, but there are three:
OneTime: An activity that happens once.
Series: A template that defines a recurring activity (an activity that repeats on different dates).
Occurrence: An individual activity part of a recurring series of activities.
In the below image, there is one Series (with a Record ID of 324), and five Occurrences.
When a user creates an activity and sets it up with recurrence, they are making one activity with a recurrence type of series. Doing so automatically generate all the activities for that series giving them a recurrence type of occurrence.
An occurrence will have the same details as the series, except for the date and, eventually, status. In the above image, the start date for each occurrence changes, but other fields remain the same. This occurrence is tied to its series by the Recurrence Record ID.
As mentioned above, the Series recurrence type has a Record ID of 324. Each occurrence is tied to this series by its Recurrence Record ID, which is also set to 324. If you were to make a change to the series, for example the activity type, then this will also change each of its occurrences!
In the below image, we have changed the series to type Meeting. In doing so, all of the occurrences turn into Meetings as well.
However, what if you wish to change one occurrence? Maybe a scheduling conflict has come up and you need to alter the time of one. You definitely can change it, and this updates another field called IsChangedOccurrence.
In the below example, I have changed one occurrence's time to start at 2pm and its activity type to Other (Record ID 332). I've displayed the IsChangeOccurrence field, and notice it is the only one set to True. This is automatically set when a change is made to an occurrence and indicates it's been changed from the original Series template.
NOTE: Changing the Status does not affect the IsChangedOccurrence field. So you can set an activity to Cancelled or In Progress.
Now, what happens if we were to change the series? Let's change it back to a To-Do activity type:
And look! All the occurrences, except for the one where IsChangedOccurence is True, has been automatically updated to a To-Do activity type.
One final note, you will be unable to delete a series if there are existing occurrences for it. If you wish to remove a series, you will need to delete all of its occurrences first.