Dates

Because collecting accurate dates is important in the context of local government transactions, which often have statutory / legislative consequences, we have powerful no code functionality.

When one clicks to add a Date field type the following is presented:

Date Field Type

Layout options

There are three different version of date input available to you and these are controlled by the following options:

Display a single field instead of three separate fields

If this is checked (the default), the date will be a plain box and the user will enter the date in one string i.e. 01/12/2021.

If this is unchecked, it will appear as follows:

3 separate fields design pattern

The boxes themselves illustrate the expected date format.

Date Display Type

This setting controls whether a calendar picker is presented or not. There are two options:

Text Input - where the customer types the date (this is the default)

Calendar Picker - where a customer can either type the date OR pick from the calendar that pops up:

Calendar Picker

Calendar pickers are good for dates that are recent or about to happen. I.e. when did you move if they're reporting an address move.

For dates of birth etc. Text Input is best.

Date Validation

You have the ability to control what a user can enter in terms of dates. This has TWO options.

The first is Static date validation.

To provide an example of this let's say you have a date field you want to add where the customer can only choose a date in a given financial year.

In this case today's date is not really relevant, what is though is the date range the customer can enter a date within I.e. for the past financial year the date range would be 01/04/2018 and 31/03/2019. This is how you can do this using the new date validation functionality where the range is static:

Static Date type

The second is the smarter Dynamic date validation

This is the one that will be used A LOT by you. So let's say you want a date field to not allow any dates:

• earlier than 1 month ago from today AND

• not allow dates any further in the future or later than 14 days away from today

The following illustrates how the new dynamic date validation makes this possible:

Dynamic Date type

The drop down in the above which contains the 'Today' value can be changed to be:

• Today

• Yesterday

• Tomorrow

Today is the default as it is most logical and likely to be used. The 'Operator' drop down can contain:

• Plus

• Minus

With the defaults set to minus/plus for earliest/latest respectively as it is most logical.

The time span drop down has options of:

• Days

• Months

• Years

Weekly isn't there as one can, for example, use 21 days for 3 weeks.

Finally, note that it is possible to add validation to the earliest valid date but not the latest valid date and vice versa. And in the same vein you can also say for example:

• Earliest date should be static and no earlier than 01/01/2019

• Latest date should be dynamic and no more in the future than 3 months

From eDesigner 2.13 - Prepopulated date field with today's date

Date fields: addition of the following options to the Date field type:

• Pre populate with today’s date. This will be the date that the page on which the field is placed is loaded. Not the form submitted date.

• Read-only

Add a Smart Field and the Date Text field option now has the options to Pre-populate with today’s date and set whether the field is read only

A new Resource has been added for Read Only fields to enable you to configure the indicator displayed for them. This will default to read-only but can be changed to blank if required.