General

Re: Date Field Conundrum

BejeweledOne — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 11:36:43 GMT

No, I wasn't referring to the 'Created Date' column.

I was referring to fields in the InfoPath form itself that are formatted as date or date/time fields. When promoting your fields, you cannot 'allow users to edit data in this field by using a datasheet or properties page’ on any date formatted field. What this means is that a workflow (we use Nintex) will not see that date field and so it can't update it.

I made a very interesting discovery though in troubleshooting all of this and it resolves the issue. If you make your field plain text and include the word 'date' in the field name, when you promote the field to your SharePoint library, SharePoint automatically creates the column as a date/time column. So now your field (column) is editable by the workflow (provided you selected the 'allow users to edit data in this field by using a datasheet or properties page' when promoting it) and even better, (for me anyway) the column is then able to be made editable and is then able to be edited or deleted in SharePoint. The ability to delete is fantastic if you end up with the problem where your form has somehow lost it's connection to the column. You can then delete it and republish your form and recreate the column without having to rename it in the property promotion and change workflows etc.

I tested this several times after discovering it and verified that it worked every time I created a plain text field with the word 'date' as part of the field name.

Re: Date Field Conundrum

bcenters — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 17:25:47 GMT

If you are trying to change the created date column you will not be able to do this with InfoPath. You will need to write a script to run on the List to change those properties. I prefer PowerShell but others will say Visual Studio. Whatever makes you more comfortable.

Date Field Conundrum

BejeweledOne — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 14:31:22 GMT

I am having a problem that I have yet to be able to figure out. I have an equipment record form. This form library is hosting records that have been created from data that was imported from access to a list. The problem that I have, is in infopath it will not allow me to make a date field editable in the property promotion.

I am unable to update the date fields in the records I created in the form library. Is there any way around this? I am using a workflow to update all of this and the variables have to be the same as the source field which are date fields. I can't change them without losing the data.