How can I use the current date as a condition for question visibility?

[JacobHouseman]

Hello everyone,

I am using S123 Connect (version 3.20.63) to produce a comprehensive park inspection form for my organization. Certain questions will only be necessary on a seasonal basis—for instance, we do not need field crews assessing sledding areas in the summer.

The math behind Survey123's date/time system has been perplexing to me, so I wanted to ask about the feasibility of this workflow:

1. Define a range of calendar dates in a question's visibility field
2. Get the current date at the beginning of the form
3. Display questions based on whether the date falls within the correct range

We have already implemented step 2 as a date question with its default set to today(). Ideally, the solutions to steps 1 & 3 would work regardless of the calendar year.

Has anyone configured a survey to work similarly to this? I would appreciate any insight or experience you could provide. Thank you!

[JenniferAcunto · Accepted solution]

If I was to set this up, I would be pulling the numeric month value out of todays date and into an integer field.

format-date(${todays_date}, '%n')

and then use that to determine if a question is relevant, so if I wanted the question to display only in June, July, and August I would set up my relevant like:

${todays_month} >=6 and ${todays_month} <= 8

If you want more granular control, you can do the same basic set-up with the addition of a zero padded day.

format-date(${todays_date}, '%n%d')

You want to make sure you're using that zero padded day option so that the result will be consistent. That way we can again use a range in the relevant field. This set-up will only be visible June 1 - July 15

${todays_monthday} >= 601 and ${todays_monthday} <= 715

[JacobHouseman]

That worked a charm—just what I was looking for. Thank you!

Edit: just wanted to ask if there is a functional difference between using today() as a default versus as a calculation. Are there cases where it's better to use one over the other?

[JenniferAcunto]

I would put it in the default column if I'm expecting the user to possibly change it, but if it is a date I'm capturing automatically for a calculation or something I'm going to be hiding from the user I put it in calculation. Though that is just personal preference. I use the calculate field a lot more than I do the default one, so it also keeps me from having to do a lot of horizontal scrolling when going through my survey.