Forum Discussion
JacobJacob
8 years agoQrew Cadet
How about just making table B a connected table and filter only the records where the effective date is on or after today. You could then set it to refresh every hour. Then only the records that have an effective date past today will pull into that table. There are cons to using a connected table but this seems simpler than managing four tables.
- RichardPfister8 years agoQrew CadetThank you! I have not learned about connected tables yet but it certainly seems like a better solution. I'll tinker with this approach and post back.
- RichardPfister8 years agoQrew CadetI'm trying to build the connected table to handle this problem and I don't see a way to filter the connected fields using a dynamic date. I can set it for "Now" but that doesn't update as time progresses. The date field in the connection filter does not allow any typing, just date selection. I want to create a connection that connects records whose effective date is <= the current point in time (i.e. via formula), essentially connecting fields to the new table when they become effective. Any ideas on how to make this happen?
- JacobJacob8 years agoQrew CadetSure thing. Can you create a formula checkbox on table one that goes to true if the date field is after today "If([~date field] > Today(), true)" then fire off the the connected table based on that.
- JacobJacob8 years agoQrew CadetAlso I might add this is just a suggestion for your problem without knowing the process or business whatsoever. Is it possible to keep all of this in one table and just use different reports, notifications, or/and form rules to determine what people are seeing and doing on the form? This could prevent you dealing with connected tables which can be annoying and limit the amount of steps in the process.
- RichardPfister8 years agoQrew CadetThat's brilliant! But will that checkbox change without user interaction? If the record on Table 1 is created Monday with an effective date of Friday and nobody touches the record again, will the checkbox update itself?
- RichardPfister8 years agoQrew CadetAnd to give you some context: I want people to submit changes to our Roster as soon as they are aware of them, future-dated as often as possible...but I don't want someone's July-1 retirement being reflected as actual on the Roster until that date comes around or they will show as inactive when they're not (they could lose building access, systems access etc. too early). So I've built separate tables and forms for different request types to be fed to the Roster when they become effective.
- JacobJacob8 years agoQrew CadetFirst: I believe the formula box should work without interaction but you can test it to be certain.
Second: Basically you have a roster table (users) and these users are submitting requests to change a field on that table from say active to retired? However that field needs to reflect that they are retiring on July 1st not today. Am I close? - JacobJacob8 years agoQrew CadetCould you just make this rosters status field (active, retired, etc) a formula field and default it to active. Then have the users edit a new field called future status field which is a multi-choice select where they can select a future status like retired or inactive. Pair that with a required date field. Then your formula field will be something like If(Today() is after the date field show [Future Status Field] if not show active.
- RichardPfister8 years agoQrew CadetThe challenge with this approach is that I have 31 fields on the roster, the retirement date/status is just one example. So I should probably give the full context.
The roster contains everything from seat number, to name, to User ID, to active status. The managers can submit anything from a simple seat change to a brand new hire to a termination. I've got separate forms (and tables) for new hires, terms and data updates. The data update form shows every field of existing data from the roster in a formula field and then presents the same fields in an editable format: the manager can change any or all of these fields as needed.
The tables serve as a change log, while the forms allow the managers to interact in more user friendly way and also allows me to control their inputs with required fields.
I cannot have the forms they submit feed immediately to a live Master Roster, but I want it to feed when the effective date of the request becomes active.
I think your approach would work, but I don't think we could have more than 1 future-dated action per person.