Default Time Picker - Working for 'Hour' but not for 'Minute'

[richmus]

Hi All,

Hope you can help, this is driving me mad!

I've got a canvas app connected to an Excel file in OneDrive; we're using it to track when a referral is received into our service, so when a new item is added, we want to form to default to the current date and time.

Here is what everything is set to currenly:

Card Default:

ThisItem.'Referral Time'

[doesn't make a difference if I remove or change this]

Default Date:

Today()

Default value for the Hour picker:

Text(Now(),"[$-en-GB]hh")

Default value for the Minute picker

Text(Now(),"[$-en-GB]mm")

The Date and Hour work just fine, but the Minute picker defaults to '04' no matter what time it is.

I've tried everything I can think of to get it to work, but am completely stumped.

Thanks in advance,

Rich

[RandyHayes]

@richmus 

First, let's change your formulas a bit.

For the Date, you will want your Default to be: Coalesce(Parent.Default, Today())

For the Hour, you will want the Default to be: Coalesce(Hour(Parent.Default), Hour(Now()))

And for the Minute Default : Coalesce(Minute(Parent.Default), Minute(Now()))

If that by itself does not produce results you want, then what is the items properties of the Minute dropdown?

I hope this is helpful for you.

[richmus]

Thanks @RandyHayes for replying so quickly!

The Coalesce formula works for the Date field but for Hour and Minute it now just displays '00'

Items in Hours dropdown:

["00","01","02","03","04","05","06","07","08","09","10","11","12","13","14","15","16","17","18","19","20","21","22","23"]

Items in Minutes dropdown:

["00","01","02","03","04","05","06","07","08","09","10","11","12","13","14","15","16","17","18","19","20","21","22","23","24","25","26","27","28","29","30","31","32","33","34","35","36","37","38","39","40","41","42","43","44","45","46","47","48","49","50","51","52","53","54","55","56","57","58","59"]

Thanks again,

Rich

[RandyHayes]

@richmus 

Ah, those item properties are a throwback to the old days.  They still haven't updated the Form datacards with time dropdowns to the new way...but either rate, they are just fine.

Place a label IN the datacard where you have these dropdowns and set the Text property to : Parent.Default

Is that showing the correct time?

[richmus]

@RandyHayes 

That displayed nothing but then I noticed that the existing entry for 'Default' in the DataCard was:

ThisItem.'Referral Time'

(doh)

Which would return nothing because it's a new entry

So.... I changed the DataCard Default to: Now() and the text file returns the correct date and time, and the drop down boxes suddenly all started working!!

Thanks so much 🙂

[RandyHayes]

@richmus 

Actually, it is not correct!!  Even though you might perceive that it is working, your form is now broken for the ability to Edit an existing record.

Your Default property of the datacard should be : ThisItem.'Referral Time'

The Default of the datacard should always refer to the field in your datasource (usually and typically).

I had assumed you were editing a record, but you are now mentioning a new record.  So...all good. But, change the properties as follows.  I should have mentioned this on last post after seeing your Items properties.

For the Date, you will want your Default to be: Coalesce(Parent.Default, Today())

For the Hour, you will want the Default to be: Text(Coalesce(Hour(Parent.Default), Hour(Now())), "00")

And for the Minute Default : Text(Coalesce(Minute(Parent.Default), Minute(Now())), "00")

The significance on the above is to convert the numeric result to the text values of the items property.

So, put your Default on the datacard back to what it should be and make the above changes and you should be good.

[richmus]

@RandyHayes -

That is giving me "00" on the hours and minutes again.....

This app actually has different 'New Item' and 'Edit Item' forms as the admin team enter some additional data, not all of which is visible to the rest of the team - so if it's going to be a hassle working out why the above isn't working, having a datacard default of Now() isn't actually going to cause an issue in this particular case!

Thanks again,

Rich

[RandyHayes · Accepted solution]

@richmus 

So then, your Parent.Default is not blank for some reason.  This might be a factor with the Excel connection on this field.  I don't work with the Excel connector much, so it may have some quirks to default values for new items like dates.  Normally a new record will have Blank as it's default for any column not explicitly defined to have a default.  So the Coalesce would do as intended.

Let's improvise a little then on the formulas:

For the Date, you will want your DefaultDate to be: 

    If(yourFormName.Mode = FormMode.New, Today(), Parent.Default)

For the Hour, you will want the Default to be: 

    Text(If(yourFormName.Mode = FormMode.New, Hour(Now())), Hour(Parent.Default)), "00")

And for the Minute Default : 

    Text(If(yourFormName.Mode = FormMode.New, Minute(Now()), Minute(Parent.Default)), "00")

[richmus]

@RandyHayes 

Thanks so much, now works perfectly - save removing an extra ')' after Now()) in the Hour formula

You've saved me hours of pain - really grateful 🙂

Rich

[RandyHayes]

@richmus 

Glad to help!  Sorry about the extra ')' in the formula...now you have an extra - use it someplace where you might need it. 😂