We are running into a few issues with the date fields from 2 data sources.
DART and DATE We are connecting to DART and have a DATE field. Based on the Field Organizer, the original format of the DATE comes in as Category. We want to convert this to use a Date/Time format (so that we can run some formulas later on), however, when choosing the Date/Time option in the drop down, it blanks out the entire date entry. I believe we've used this function before, so not sure why this is removing the date entries now.
How can we ensure that a date is read as a date?
SALESFORCE and DATE We are connecting to Salesforce and also have a DATE field. Based on the Field Organizer, the original format of the DATE comes in as Date/Time. The date format is defined as yyyy-MM-dd and this is displaying properly in the preview. We want to concatenate this date with another column, however, when we do this, the date formatting is being converted to a very long string.
If the Date not being recognised automatically as a date format on import, you will have to manually exactly specify the incoming format, using the Omniscope date format convention e.g. yyyy/MMM/dd, or M-d-yyyy etc. See our KnowledgeBase page on date formatting: http://www.visokio.com/dates-and-times
Re concatenation; you need to check that date display format specified in the Field Organiser block, and make sure that time of the day is not included, i.e. delete the HH:mm:ss part of the formatting.
You can also duplicate the incoming Date/Time field, and re-type the duplicate field as Text, and refer to that one in the formula. That way you can alternate between using Date/Time and Text/Category formats for different purposes (for example, if you have limited number of dates, you can treat them as Text/Category tick-boxes rather than sliders when filtering by dates in the Sidebar devices).
Note regarding SFDC system dates: Please note that system-generated dates in Salesforce have a specific format, which Omniscope can import and manipulate, but unneeded characters need to be literaled/escaped out using single quotes...