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Question

How do current date / read only date fields work?

Forms
Updated March 18, 2021
asked on March 17, 2021

I have a read-only/default current date field setup. This causes it to change into a field which informs them that the date will be captured upon submission.

If the form is submitted at 2 different steps, does it capture the first submission or the second?

If it captures the second submission date, how do we capture the first submission date?

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SELECTED ANSWER
replied on March 17, 2021

If you have a read-only date field set to current date as the default, it captures that current date on the first submission. When the next form is loaded, the field will be filled with the initial submission date/time, so won't be updated with the new default value. 

Date: Current_date  would get filled with

Date: 3/17/20 on submission. 

When next form loads, Date is already set to 3/17/20 so it won't be updated. You would need another field, defaulted to current_date that was blank on the second form if you wanted that to be tracked as well. 

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replied on March 17, 2021

That is perfect, so the original date fields from the employee submission will be accurate and any new date fields that appear (from field rules) on the employer submission will be accurate.

I have given up using separate forms for each step on anything that needs to be stored in the repository as a single document. Now I am using field rules to show the fields required for each step. Forms doesn't offer an option to re-combine forms that are split into separate steps, and having workflows and templates just to combine a form over complicates the config.

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replied on March 18, 2021

Definitely using Field rules works, so no need to change - but where you said Forms doesn't offer an option to re-combine forms that are split...

You can take fields from multiple forms in your process and combine them into a single that is displayed later in the process or archived to your repository.

If Form A has a field with variable user_field_a, and Form B has a field with variable user_field_b, you can add both fields to Form C using the "Variable" picker on the Layout page when setting up Form C.  Then Form C will show the values that were populated by the users when completing forms A and B.

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replied on March 18, 2021

I have found using that feature to combine forms to be super dangerous and avoid at all costs. If anyone ever goes to update the form they need to know that their updates need to be made twice, since the updates do not carry over to the archive form (this is why I requested a prefab feature). But if they make a mistake and the updates made do not match exactly, it can lead to serious loss of data in the archive.

You might expect a mistake to be easy to prevent, but when your dealing with field rules, calculations, javascript, etc it is very easy to miss one thing when trying to reproduce everything you just spent the last hour or 2 doing to upgrade a form.

It is however really useful when trying to share small amounts of information across forms.

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