Attribute types: Date

This is the third post in the series about Attribute types in Lumeer. In the first post, we introduced the concept of Attribute types, and in the second post, we focused on Number and Percentage types. Now we are going to look closer at another type: Date.

Let’s start with an example: Consider this table which we use to store information about tasks. It contains a summary of the task, start date and due date. We add the first row – you can of course enter dates without attribute type set and Lumeer will treat them as a text.

Then more people start to collaborate on the table and add new records. If they are guest users, they don’t even see other records (and their date formats) and this can easily result in a situation similar to this:

Obviously, such a situation is not desired and we want to prevent it from happening. Date attribute type does exactly that – you can set the format and also set minimum or maximum value if you wish. There is a list of pre-defined formats and you can even create your own ones (see the list of supported formulas).

Invalid values in the third row are now underlined – that way you or your colleagues will easily spot them…

… and fix them. What’s more, after clicking into the cell, a datepicker will appear. When you select a date, it is automatically saved in the correct format.

So far, we have been looking at the data only through table perspective. However, there are visually more comprehensible perspectives that will make working with time and dates more effective. Let’s look at them!

First, we extend this table with more records. Actually, we will use table Tasks from Lumeer’s Project tracker template:

Switching the perspective to Timeline gives you a much clearer view of the tasks, and, what’s more, you can set and display task dependencies there.

Timeline is ideal for getting an overview of data which have both start and end date and took longer time. But it is not suitable for following data from Candidates coordination template, because:

1. Interviews have exact times.
2. Interviews don’t have end dates.
3. We are usually interested in a shorter timespan when viewing them – e.g. next day, week or month.

Well, if you imagined times before computers, probably nobody would take notes of events (such as interviews) in the form of timeline. Instead, they would use a calendar. And that’s exactly what you can do also in Lumeer! Just switch the perspective to Calendar:

To reschedule an event, you don’t have to go back to Table perspective – drag’n’drop will do that:

Next time, we will look at Duration attribute type.