Date Fields

Access to this product feature is dependent on your institution's Watermark agreement
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Overview

Date fields can be comprised of a combination of month, day, term, or year elements. Collecting dates is crucial to accurately reporting records on reports. For this reason, by default we require at least one date field to be filled out in order to save a record. For details on this feature see Requiring Significant Dates.

Common Customizations

• Removing Day and/or Month fields from screens where they aren't applicable
• Changing Calendar Years to Academic Years

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

• Can date fields be moved to the top of the screen? Yes, if you think this will help faculty fill out data more accurately, move the fields. Since by default at least one date is required faculty shouldn't ever forget a date, but they may be frustrated if they aren't able to easily find the field.
• Can the required symbol appear next to date fields so faculty see an indicator? No, the required symbol "*" will only appear if all date fields are required. This would work for a Term and Year or Academic Year question, but not for a Day, Month, Year combination.

Term Dates

Faculty Success translates each term value into an associated date range. The following terms correspond with the respective date ranges:

• Winter: January 1 - January 14
• Spring: January 15 - April 30
• Summer: May 15 - August 31
• Fall: September 1 - December 31

You cannot customize the date ranges associated with the terms above, as they are part of our Base Instrument. However, we are able to create custom terms for your campus if the dates that you use vary significantly from these terms. To request custom terms for your campus, please submit a Screen Revision work request with the following:

• Term name we should use.

  Please note that this value must be either unique across all clients, or the custom date values for the term name must be shared for those using the term name. To facilitate unique terms, it may be necessary to include your campus domain in the term value you choose.

• The dates that should be associated with each custom term.

  We do advise that terms do not cross academic years if possible to facilitate reporting. Note that the dates are those that will apply every year and are not year-specific; we recommend selecting dates that represent the average start and stop date of that term across multiple years.

Faculty Success also translates academic year information into a specific date range: September 1 - August 31. This academic year date range is also customizable.

Significant Dates

Faculty Success can designate date fields as either significant or insignificant. Faculty Success uses significant dates to determine if the record will be included on a report, based on the specific date range selected by the user running the report. An insignificant date is simply another data element and we do not use it to date the record, or to determine whether a record is available to a report. However, insignificant dates – along with any data element – can be used in report criteria to refine which records are displayed from those available to a report.

Multiple significant dates may exist on a screen and may consist of any combination of date formats such as month, day, or year. The earliest date serves as the beginning date of the record. The latest date serves as the end date of the record.

If exactly two significant dates appear on a screen, and none of these dates are within a dynamic sub-answer (DSA) – see below – Faculty Success determines the date of the record as follows:

• If both the first and second dates have values, Faculty Success uses the first and second dates as the start and end dates of the record, respectively.
• If the first date has no value and the second date has a value, Faculty Success uses the second date as both the start and end date of the record.
• If the first date has a value and the second date has no value, Faculty Success uses the first date as the start date and uses a null (infinite) value as the end date.

Significant dates must appear in ascending, chronological order on a screen. For example, a start date must always precede an end date, or a date submitted must always precede a date published.

If a DSA contains a single date field, and there are no significant dates elsewhere on the screen, we can make that field significant. For single date fields within DSAs, Faculty Success will scan all rows and use the minimum and maximum date values, regardless of the order in which they were entered, as the respective start and end dates of the record.

If a DSA contains multiple date fields like Start Date and End Date, however, we should not make these date fields significant. The validation that ensures date fields are entered in chronological order, as well as the rules for calculating the record dates, is too restrictive to permit this configuration.