Can one search for records with a date field older than XYZ?

[Michael Shapiro]

I see that I can create a search for records with a date field that “was in the last [24 hours, etc.]”

Is there a way to search for the opposite of this? That is, records whose date field is older than [interval of time]?

Thanks in advance,

Mike

[Brendan]

You can use the is before or is after or is on or before or is on or after comparison operators and provide a specific date you want as the target date.

[Michael Shapiro]

Thanks for the quick response, Brendan.

I was interested in a relative rather than absolute target. E.g. “older than six months ago”. Or the negation of the current “was in the last…” criterion, which would effectively be the same thing. I take it that this isn’t currently an option?

[Brendan]

Ah I see. No, there isn’t currently an option to do a search such as “older than six months ago” or any other unit of time. Perhaps in the future.

[Michael Shapiro]

For what it’s worth, this kind of query would make TFP much more useful as a CRM. A very typical CRM search is something like “show me people whose $last-contacted date is older than three months ago”.

I personally would love to bail on the overpriced Daylite, and have periodically flirted with the idea of moving to TF. Lack of this specific functionality is the current roadblock for me personally.

[Brendan]

Hi Michael,

That’s a good comparison operator to have. I was actually working on it today, but it’s proving to be difficult because I’ve run out of different kinds of comparison operators I can do. So I’m trying to fudge the existing one I’m using for this type of query to expand it so it can be optionally used for after and before type queries.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Michael Shapiro]

As you are implementing a feature I’d like, I am not going to chastise you for a little kludgery in implementation. :)

[Brendan]

I’ve found a way to make it nice. Although I’m not sure how it’ll read in different languages.

I changed the “was in the last” and “in the next” comparison operators to just “was” and “is” with an additional parameter to let you choose “after”, “before”, or “within”.

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[Brendan]

At least I hope it makes sense.

[Michael Shapiro]

So if I’m interpreting all this correctly…

[date] “is after three weeks” means “occurs three weeks from today or later”
[date] “was within three months” means “occurred within the last three months”
[date] “was before three months” means “occurred further in the past than three months ago”

Does that sound correct?

[Author]

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