Advanced Function Fields

We're considering adding specialized field types for advanced functions and calculations. Things like "Square Root" for number fields and "Day of Month" for date fields.

We'd love any suggestions for function types and how you'd like to use them.


  1. square root (better yet n root)
  2. some kind of conditional if...then...else function
  3. round
  4. sine, cosine, tangent
  5. absolute value (although this can be done with square root if you had that)

square root would be simply dandy

I want to calculate a confidence interval - a pretty basic statistical property.  Need sqrt - trying to implement square rooting using the limited functions currently available seems, if not impossible, at least a nightmare

I would love to be able to extract certain data from any field that is grouped such as Address field,  i need to display the City, ST only from that field but cannot separate it out.   This could work similar to the text combo field no?   Maybe with some find/replace matching to separate out the content needed?  or in my case just the ability to display parts of multi-data fields like the Address field.

Any chance to use the sum fields for calculations?

For the date field it would be great to have the following options

Date 

  • is before
  • is before or equal to
  • is after
  • is after or equal to
  • is equal to
  • is not equal to
  • is blank
  • is not blank
The next set of options after the above is chosen would be
  • The Date
  • This many days ago
  • This many days from now
  • Yesterday
  • Today
  • Tomorrow
  • This week
  • Last week
  • Next week
  • This month
  • Last month
  • Next month
  • This quarter
  • Last quarter
  • Next quarter
  • Last year
  • This year
  • Next year

This would enable you to check a due date that before 30 days in the past and only display those records. With the current date filters I am unable to figure out how to do that. 

Added to the above - it would be great to have additional Date field filter options. 


As well as the below, it would be VERY useful to have the "is not" versions of the following:

Is not today (obvi. you can use the is not XX/XX/XXXX but this doesn't update for preset filters)Is not during the current (week, month, quarter, year)Is not during the previous (day, week....)



Days between dates

Year of date

Month of Date

Day of Date

Day of Week of Date

A suite of String Functions

I would like the suggestion of end  of month + () number of days 

I would love to see adding colored backgrounds to object fields when forms are submitted. Example:

Record Rules:

Action>update this record

When>every form submission

Values>Set>___________>to color>___________.

I would work on improving your Sum function, so that when the Sum changes fields that reference the Sum will also change.

I'm new to Knack, but I'd like to set EOM (end of month), and custom recurring days (ie recur in 7 days, or recur in 20 days, 30 days, etc).  This is useful for a great many apps in my business.  

Adding "Day of Week" (Monday, MON or MO) to date fields would be useful. We schedule weekly tasks, would be nice to sort/view by day of the week.

log(number, [base])

I would love to see some date functions work across child records.  For instance you may have project record that has Milestones in it with a date (or preferably a date range) and those limits could be applied to a date range in the Project that can grow and change as Milestones are added, edited or deleted.  A cascade would be the best option so the Tasks below a Milestone could then cascade up to change the date field in the Milestone and so on up to the Project.

I thought I just did this, but may have inadvertently just sent and email to Louis Springer whose comment (just above) prompted mine. Apologies to Louis, if so . .  :slight_smile:

Because I use Knack for historical records I would like to have this format:

DD Month name YYYY

Note: no punctuation between the three values, just a space. Thanks.

Because I use Knack for historical records, I would also very much like to have the format:
DD Month name YYYY
Note: no punctuation between the three values, just a single space. Thanks.

 

New dates formats:

*DD/MM

*MM/DD

*MM/YY

*DD, month name, YY

Caculations with date formats:

*Sum just days

*Sum just months but fix days 

*Sum just months but fix days and fix years

*Sum just Years

 

MUST HAVE A PAYMENT CALCULATION FORMULA!!!  i.e.
(r*PV)/(1-(1+r)^-n

Currently you can’t “raise to a power” with the “^” key in a formula field so it’s tough to calculate payment amounts.

 

I would really like to see a “Year” function that displays just the year from a full date, or even the option to do this in the “Date Formula” field type.

I also love ALL the other ideas so far!