Enter Dates without using Spinners?

[KylaCupp_SBY]

Hi,

My field crew has asked if there is alternative way to enter dates rather than using the year and month spinners? They're finding it especially cumbersome with birthdays and would like to be able to type it in. Is there an easy alternative like just typing the numbers for dates? 

Has anyone had success with a work around? I've been trying to figure out a work around by concatenating integer fields like month, day, year and then converting it into a date field but having no luck. Is this possible? 

Thanks,

Kyla

[LaurenceTait · Accepted solution]

Should be fairly straightforward. You just need to make sure you constrain your inputs to appropriate values and bind the field type to date.

[KylaCupp_SBY]

Thank you so much @LaurenceTait  that is exactly what I was looking for, I just missed the note step with binding the date field type!

I'm only having two small issues that are probably easy fixes: 

1. The formatting seems a little wonky on every display in Survey123 Connect and mobile, squeezed farther left than other questions. 

2. I'm getting the wrong day in the final date iteration (Tdate) in your case. I have a feeling it's something to do with the time but not sure what the solution would be here? 

Thanks,

Kyla

 

[LaurenceTait]

The formatting I can't help with. I'm assuming it has something to do with the way the survey is set up. Try copying the fields from my  sheet to a new sheet that you know displays correctly, and see what happens.

As far as the date problem, does it always return the previous day?  Can you open the attached survey and let us know what the result is and whether all dates are the same and true to today's date? That should tell us where the problem is coming from.

[KylaCupp_SBY]

Starting from scratch and creating a new form using the first .xlsx you sent I have the issue: 

When starting a new form using the latest .xlsx you sent I am still getting the same issue and the now() is true: 

I've tried unsuccessfully to pull the UTC offset and account for that but I just haven't been able to make it work and I'm not sure that is even the issue.

Any suggestions would be helpful! 

Thanks,

Kyla

[LaurenceTait]

Almost certainly an issue with the UTC offset.

Try the attached XLSX. If the ISO_date field works, use that formula in your survey.

Caveat. I can't be bothered to modify the calculation for part hour offsets. So if you are in one of those time zones that have half part hour offsets, the calculation will be out by up to 45 minutes Unless you are recording in the middle of the night, that won't be an issue for the date. If you are recording in the middle of the night and you work in a time zone with part hour offsets, you'll need to adjust the formula. 

[KylaCupp_SBY]

Thank you! That did the trick! 

[LaurenceTait]

In case you hadn't noticed, you need to make sure that the months and dates are in two digit format. Takes a bit of fiddling with the inputs.

[KylaCupp_SBY]

Thank you, I had to do a fair bit of finagling but I got it figured out. I feel like this was just such a big rabbit hole to go down for one simple formatting request. Also just ended up using the UNIX Epoch and adjusting for the UTC offset here since we'll only be using it in our small municipality. For some reason every time I tried to set the whole thing to decimal date and time it would give me errors. I'm sure there is a simple solution for that but like I said I had already gone too deep lol. Thank you for all of your help!