Search by date via admin module

Question

Does Sawtooth have a desire to include the date as a search option through the admin module?

I have personally had a need for it at times.

Do others have a need for it?

Currently we have system fields such as the respondent number and the disposition code.

Are there other search options needed?

Looking forward to your comments.

Answer 1

Yes, there is a need and would be a great add-on.

We solve this requirement by capturing value of day,month,year in freeformat variables using perl functions & placing at start & end of survey.

We can filter data using combination of these responses.

Comments

Let's be honest here. Date fields are horrible when trying to perform calculations of some sort. Other software I have used in the past have a feature which can record the number of days since day 0 or the number of days since a specified day (e.g. since January 1 2014). The result is a simple integer number. This type of conversion makes it easy for filtering and calculation purposes.

Has Sawtooth had requests of this nature?

Answer 2

Hi Paul,

I can't say it's a request we get frequently in the support team.  I would guess most people go through the extra step of downloading and exporting to look at dates.  It's probably doable, we just save timestamps as Unix timestamps, so there would need to be a conversion done to make them searchable.

I'll log this for v9 requests.

Comments

Thanks Brian. I guess it all depends on demand and the importance of other features you are also trying to implement in v9? Appreciate your comments.

---

Yeah, it's a mixture of demand, requirements to implement and presence of workarounds I guess.  Ideally we'd like to include every request anyone wants :)  There's a few things I'd like in the admin module to change as well, such as a way to set your local time as the timestamp instead of using GMT, so I added your request to that area.

---

Thanks for the explanation Brian. In an ideal world, you would implement every customers wish list. At least Sawtooth always listen and reply and on most occasions some of wishes do come true. Not so true with other providers out there.

I like the idea of setting your own time zone through the admin module. You get my vote.