Hello,

We have upgraded to version 8202M in our development environment (from 8105M) and are testing the various new features. There's now a calendar control that appears as a default when you run a report with a filter parameter on a date field. I really like it in some contexts, because it's quick and easy to pick a date.

However, in other contexts, it's a little challenging for our users. For example, some of our data contains dates far in the future to indicate an open end date (eg 12/31/2099). With the calendar, the user has to scroll through the years and months, as there's no way to directly enter a date, as far as I can tell.

Also, there's no time component displayed. There are other contexts where we want the user to be able to enter a time range of several hours.

Has anybody found a way to enter a date or time manually in 8202M?

Thanks,
Gail

This message has been edited. Last edited by: FP Mod Chuck,

Maybe you can add code to set the TO_DATE to _FOC_NULL if a value isn't selected.

Thanks for the suggestion! I've been pondering ways to set certain date defaults. However, I forgot to mention that we're limited to using the InfoAssist gui. There's some logic as to why our report writers don't have access to the code, but it does limit us in certain cases.

Can you provide a sample based example of the date prompt? I assume you're talking about Autoprompt in InfoAssist. Are Reporting Objects with -DEFAULTs an option?

Here's an example with the empdata table. The pop-up calendar appears to be related to the Actual format, vs the Usage format. If I use HIREDATE in the filter (which has a A8 format), I don't get a calendar. If I use NewHireDate (which I defined as YYMD), then I get the calendar.

We haven't used Reporting Objects at all, although I appreciate their value. In general, our report writers frequently need to add their own joins, even to pre-joined clusters that we've created for them.

 
-*COMPONENT=Define_empdata
DEFINE FILE ibisamp/empdata
 NewHireDate/YYMD=EMPDATA.EMPDATA.HIREDATE ;
END
ENGINE INT CACHE SET ON
SET PAGE-NUM=NOLEAD
SET SQUEEZE=ON
-DEFAULTH &WF_HTMLENCODE=ON;
SET HTMLENCODE=&WF_HTMLENCODE

SET HTMLCSS=ON
-DEFAULTH &WF_EMPTYREPORT=ON;
SET EMPTYREPORT=&WF_EMPTYREPORT

-DEFAULTH &WF_SUMMARY='Summary';
-DEFAULTH &WF_TITLE='WebFOCUS Report';
TABLE FILE ibisamp/empdata
BY EMPDATA.EMPDATA.LASTNAME
BY EMPDATA.EMPDATA.FIRSTNAME
BY EMPDATA.EMPDATA.HIREDATE
WHERE NewHireDate LT &HIREDATE.(|FORMAT=YYMD).HIREDATE:.QUOTEDSTRING;
ON TABLE PCHOLD FORMAT HTML
ON TABLE NOTOTAL
ON TABLE SET CACHELINES 100
ON TABLE SET STYLE *
INCLUDE=IBFS:/FILE/IBI_HTML_DIR/javaassist/intl/EN/ENIADefault_combine.sty,$
TYPE=REPORT, TITLETEXT=&WF_TITLE.QUOTEDSTRING, SUMMARY=&WF_SUMMARY.QUOTEDSTRING, $
ENDSTYLE
END

-RUN
 

If your page was created using App Studio then you could use JQuery to modify the calendar control.

Fernando

If there's a way to modify the calendar control itself, I'm all ears! As a developer, I have access to App Studio and to code.

The catch is that our business analysts don't. So whatever I do has to be made available to them as a default using Info Assist.

Gail

If you haven't figured this out, I suggest you open a case with techsupport.

It may be time to use Reporting Objects with redefined date fields, from A8 to YYMD, for the users.