Hello,
Though there’s many improvements I’d love to see with the calendar, there’s ONE that will save the most about of time:
Please please please allow us to reference the END DATE of a Date/Time field with filters, and/or easily with formula or date formatter function.
This one simple addition could save many hours of time trying to create something as simple as a list of daily events. Since recurring and repeating events only show for their start date, and no other date beyond that, a knack dev needs to get super creative to lock the format the user can input for dates, and then use text formulas to extract the end date, then set that into another date field for which you use the calculation.
This round-about way to do a simple daily record list makes an object incredibly complicated, forces us to use custom code to disable certain pieces of the calendar to ensure formatting is consistent while using text-extracting formulas to pull the end date out of the time/date field, all while trying to do a calculation that could easily be done if the End Date could be referenced through a formula.
I’m assuming there’s some reason why Knack chose not to expose this to users, but it’s readily available in the API, so I know it’s there.
I’m begging you, please give us this one little win for the calendar. THANK YOU!
Yes, as stated in my post above, there is a way to extract the end date in a formula. However, you must set your formulas into another Date/Time field in order to perform any record filtering with them. You cannot filter records based on a formula.
Because of this, your formulas break down when the user decides to select a Single day event, ALL DAY, and furthermore, ALL DAY with repetition or multi-day. There is too much variation for these text-based formulas to work.
With some custom code and additional fields, you can control the date format and extract the end date with formulas, then set another Date/Time field to the end date based on a formula. Then you can finally use that field to perform end-date filtering on your records.
All of this complexity and extra work…just to allow a multi-day event to show up in Today’s Events list!
So I guess the feature request would either be - allow end date to be easily extracted for all user choices (such as use of the Date Formatter function), OR fix the Date/Time field and the calendar view so that Multi-day and repetitive events show up when filtering by days other than their start date.
Thank you Sunny, I’ve never been so happy to find out that I’m missing something. I believe I’m very close to what you have there, but my date/time fields haven’t been setting correctly from the equations. Would you be willing to share your formulas and other field settings you used to make this work? I wish I would have asked for your help earlier. I really appreciated it!
Thanks so much for taking the time to post your solution; the screenshots are very helpful. I’m going to review and test this tomorrow. I’ll write back soon!
Hi Sunny,
I tweaked my object with the structure you’ve shown and it seems to work very well. Much cleaner than what I was doing. I appreciate your help very much.
One question moving forward:
Repeating events by nature do not carry the end time of the last event, therefore the duplicate events do not show in a Daily Events list, even though they will show on a calendar. Do you know of any work-around for this? The only thing I can think of is to disable the repeat check box, and create a button to “Copy” an event, so the user can manually create duplicates for repetition. But that can be a hassle for things like weekly meetings that don’t have an end date.
I’m open to any additional ideas. And once again, thank you so much for taking the time. I’m sure your response will help many others who are looking to get more out of the Date/Time field and calendar.
I didn’t understand your complete requirements. but
Yes, i think if we can disable repeat functionality but we can create a custom Repeat checkbox with the option to select weekly/Daily.
And then create a task to insert a new record. Or we can create a custom script inside or outside knack that can check records and create new records in that object.
No problem Sunny. I’m sure the way I described the question, there was a lot to unpack.
The issue is that Multi-Day and Repeating events do not show in time-based filters properly.
Your work-around is an excellent step in the right direction, since it allows multi-day events, and All-Day events to show when they should. It also makes my calendar work better. This is far better than the previous solution I had.
Since this is a small project, it’s not worth getting into the weeds just yet. This detail has me behind on this project deadline. I’m going to disable the repeat button from “Add New” and “Edit” forms like I normally do. I would love to learn more about your suggestions above if further updates are needed
It’s too bad that all of this customization needs to be done since the Date/Time field doesn’t really work as it should. I’ve used Knack for years. I love it, and recommend it to a lot of people. But this field has caused a lot of frustration - and I apologize if that came out in my request lol. The community behind Knack is truly an amazing asset to this platform.
For repeat calendar events it would be very helpful to be able to reference the start date and end date using a formula. Repeat events are only visible in Calendar view. The repeat “start date”, “end date” and “frequency” are not visible anywhere in the record? Being able to display the start date, end date and frequency (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly) for repeat events when viewing event details for our clients would be extremely helpful ‘must have’ feature! Thank you.
Hey @Marc1 I created a Feature request where I’m trying to get the community to list all the improvements they’d like to see with the Date/Time and Calendars.
I’m trying to do something a little simpler, and can’t quite work out the piece of the jigsaw i need.
I ask people to enter an event start time and date (I don’t ask for an end time on the form), and in a separate number field enter how many hours they need to book for
I want to use a formula to create a new field for the calendar which is an event start time with end time as entered and 1/2 hour travel time each side, which is essentially -0.5 to ++0.5
But I can’t see the format for a formula to enable setting start and end times
As per my understanding, it’s only possible using custom javascript. when the user enters the number of hrs then we need to adjust the start and end time and make that field hidden.
