Card Designer: Activity Card
An activity card is the compact summary block Aeon shows for each activity in a list — the rows you scroll through in the Activities view, the activity results in global search, and the activity panel on the dashboard. Every card leads with a fixed top line (the activity name and a status badge); everything below it — a description line, a row of small detail chips like location, dates, and linked-user count — is what the Activity Card Designer lets you control.
You use this designer once, as a setup task, to decide what staff see at a glance when they browse activities. If your team scans by Begin Date and Location, put those front and center. If you track a custom field on every activity, surface it. The work is visual: you drag fields from a palette onto a live preview of the card, tune how each one looks, and save the result as a reusable template.
- You're setting up Aeon and want activity cards to show the fields your staff actually scan for.
- An activity list feels cluttered or sparse — you want to add, remove, or reorder the detail chips.
- You've added a custom activity field (Activity Info 1–5) and want it visible in the list, not just on the activity record.
This page is about the card — the small list-row summary. It does not change the full activity record you open and edit; laying that out is a separate tool, the Form Designer: Activity Form. The Card Designer controls the preview, the Form Designer controls the full page. Editing a card never changes any activity's data.
Opening the Activity Card Designer
- Open the Customization Manager.
- In the Designers category, choose Card Designer.
- Click Activity Card in the left menu. (The other card types are Request Card, Request Card (Wide), and User Card.)
The header reads Activity Card Designer with the subtitle "Customize how activity cards appear in lists."
To leave, click Back at the top left. If you have unsaved edits, Aeon stops you with an Unsaved Changes dialog — "You have unsaved changes. Are you sure you want to leave? Your changes will be lost." — where you choose Leave Without Saving or Cancel.
The Card Designer is part of the Designers configuration area. Your role must have the Designers configuration capability to open and edit it; without it, the Card Designer won't appear in the Customization Manager. See Roles & Capabilities.
How the designer is laid out
The Card Designer has two toolbars across the top and two working areas below them:
- Template toolbar (top) — which template you're editing, the ⋯ template menu, the save-state indicator, and Save.
- Designer toolbar — undo and redo, a Reset to System Default button (the ↺ icon), a Zoom control, and a ? button that opens the keyboard-shortcut list.
| Area | What it does |
|---|---|
| Fields (left) | The palette of activity fields you can add, grouped into categories, with a Search fields... box at the top. |
| Card Preview (center) | A live preview of the activity card — this is your canvas. Drag fields onto it, click a field to select it, reorder rows, and edit a field's content in place. When you select a field, a small toolbar appears above it with that field's settings. |
A hint line under the preview sums up how you work: "Click a field to edit it in place · Double-click a field to edit its content · Drag to move · Double-click the toolbar label to rename · Click a row's background to reorder or remove the row."
Row 1 is fixed
The first row of every activity card is fixed and cannot be customized. It shows the selection checkbox, a lock and a view icon, the activity name, and the activity status badge on the right (for example, Scheduled). The preview labels this row "Row 1 is fixed and cannot be customized." Everything you design goes in the rows below it — up to 5 rows that you control.
Aeon's built-in activity card fills two of those rows: the activity description on a full-width line, then a chip row of location, begin date, linked users, and activity type — the first three with icons. That's the starting point you're editing, and it's what Reset to System Default returns you to.
Building the card
Add a field
You can add a field two ways:
- Drag it. Grab a field from the Fields palette and drop it onto a row in the preview (or onto the gap between rows to start a new row).
- Click it. Click a field in the palette and it's added to the row of whatever field is currently selected — or to the last row if nothing is selected.
Browse by category — Basic Info, Location & Dates, Statistics, Reference, Billing, Custom Fields, Special — or type in the Search fields... box to filter. A data field can only appear once; once it's placed, it leaves the palette.
The palette covers the activity record: Activity Name, Description, Activity Type, Activity Status, and Status Date under Basic Info; Location, Begin Date, and End Date under Location & Dates; Linked Users and Request Count under Statistics; Reference Name and Reference Number under Reference; Billing Category under Billing; and Activity Info 1–5 under Custom Fields.
The Activity Info 1–5 fields are your site's custom activity fields, so you can put locally tracked data on the card alongside the built-in fields. Give them meaningful names in Custom Field Definitions and those names are what staff see.
Add or remove a row
- To add a row, click Add Row at the bottom of the card preview. The button shows how many rows you've used (for example, Add Row (2/5)). It disappears once you reach the five-row limit.
- To remove a row, click the row's empty background to select the whole row, then use its Remove row control. You can't remove the last remaining customizable row.
Reorder fields and rows
- Move a field within or between rows: drag it to the new spot. You can also select a field and press
⌘/Ctrl+↑or⌘/Ctrl+↓to move it to the row above or below. - Reorder whole rows: click a row's empty background to select it, then drag it to a new position.
Delete a field
Select the field and either press Delete / Backspace, or click the Remove field (trash) button on its floating toolbar.
⌘/Ctrl+↑/↓— move the selected field to the row above or below.⌘D/Ctrl+D— duplicate the selected field.Delete/Backspace— remove the selected field, or the selected row.Escape— clear the selection.F6/Shift+F6— cycle focus between the palette and the preview.⌘Z/Ctrl+Z(and⇧⌘Z/Ctrl+Shift+Z) — undo and redo.⌘S/Ctrl+S— save the layout.
Press ? anywhere in the designer for this list on screen.
Styling a field
Select a field in the preview to bring up its floating toolbar. From left to right it gives you:
- Edit content (the pencil) — compose what the field says. You can also double-click the field in the preview to jump straight into editing its content.
- Width — how much horizontal space the field takes: Auto, Fill, 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, or Full width. The button shows the current setting. Detail chips are usually Auto; a description line is usually Full width.
- Swap field — replace this field with a different one from a searchable picker, keeping its place. A Template Text element has no Swap control, since its content is free-form rather than bound to a field.
- Display style — how the value is rendered:
- Plain Text — just the value.
- Icon + Text — the value with a small icon (reveals an Icon picker — for example, a map-pin next to the location).
- Badge — the value in a pill (reveals a Badge style: Default, Outline, Secondary, Destructive).
- Template — a free-form string mixing static text with field placeholders (reveals a Template string box; write something like
{name} — {location}, wrapping field names in{ }).
- Typography — Text Size (Extra Small / Small / Medium), Font Weight (Normal / Medium / Semibold / Bold), and Color (Default / Muted / Primary / Accent).
- Field options — a Custom Label (override the field's name; leave blank for the default) and Hide if Empty (on by default — the field drops off the card when an activity has no value for it, so cards stay tidy).
- Remove field (the trash) — take the field off the card.
Leave Hide if Empty on for optional fields like Reference Number or a custom field you only fill in sometimes. An activity without that value simply won't show the chip, instead of leaving an empty gap — so the list stays tight and shows only real data.
A worked example
Say you want each activity card to read: the description on its own line, then a chip row of begin date, end date, and location.
- The default card already has Description on a full-width line — leave it, and set Color to Muted under Typography if you want it to recede.
- Select the chip row and add End Date (Location & Dates) beside the existing Begin Date. Leave both at Auto width and set Display style to Icon + Text with a calendar icon.
- Drag Location to sit after them, also Icon + Text with a map-pin. Leave Hide if Empty on for all three.
- Watch the preview update as you go. When it looks right, Save.
Templates: saving and reusing layouts
A card layout is stored as a template. The template toolbar at the very top lets you keep more than one and choose which is in effect.
- Switch templates: use the template dropdown on the left of the toolbar. The one marked default is the layout staff see unless a role is assigned a different one (see below).
- New Template: from the ⋯ menu, choose New Template and name it — names have to be unique for the card type. It's created from the template you currently have open, or from Aeon's built-in system layout if none is.
- Duplicate / Rename: also in the ⋯ menu.
- Set as Default: ⋯ → Set as Default makes the selected template the one used when no role-specific layout applies.
- Reset to System Default: removes all customizations in the selected template and restores Aeon's built-in activity card. You can trigger it two ways — ⋯ → Reset to System Default, or the ↺ button on the designer toolbar, which asks Reset Layout? and warns that "This will reset all layouts (default and any overrides) to the system default. This cannot be undone."
- Delete: ⋯ → Delete removes the template. Aeon confirms, and notes that deleting also removes any role assignments that reference it (those roles fall back to the default).
Your changes are not saved automatically. The template toolbar shows Unsaved while you have pending edits and Saved once they're written. Click Save (or press ⌘S / Ctrl+S) to commit. While you have unsaved edits, a Discard changes button (a ↺ icon next to Save) appears; click it to throw away those pending edits and snap back to the last saved version. Undo / Redo (⌘Z / ⇧⌘Z) step through your edits.
The designer has two ↺ buttons that do different things. Discard changes (next to Save on the template toolbar, and only there while you have unsaved edits) just rolls back to the last saved version. Reset to System Default (the ↺ on the designer toolbar, and in the ⋯ menu) goes further — it replaces the template's saved layout with Aeon's built-in default and can't be undone.
Request cards can carry alternate layouts per queue. Activity cards can't — there's a single layout per template, and you choose which template applies through the template default and the role assignments below.
Assigning a card layout to a role
Setting a template as Default affects everyone. If you instead want a particular role to see a specific activity card, assign the template in the Role Editor rather than here.
In the Role Editor, open the Layouts tab, find Activity Card under the Cards group, and pick the template for that role. Leaving it unset means that role uses whichever template is set as the system default. See Editing a Role: Layout Assignments.
The card preview uses representative sample data, so you can design the layout without opening a real record. Once you save and the layout is in effect, open the Activities view to see your cards rendering with real activities.