display formatted date stamp using [now]

Question

Hi, I'm trying to display the time a form was modified/approved to create a unique approval number formatted as: XX–YYYYMMDD, where XX are the initials of the person approving.

I got this to work chaining several methods below:

[entry.name.upperCase.trunc(2)]-[entry.created.formatDate(yyyyMMddHHmm)].

However, this only works with the time when the form was created. I tried using [now] and FORMATDATE(NOW()) as decribed in this article, and the result is a random number like '1544543232619'.

Tried several ways of getting [now] to work but no luck.

Alex Medved _ConfiForms_ · Answer

Each ConfiForms field has a "created" field, which is set with the value on record creation - you can use that field. Also, you can always use [entry._now] or just _now to access the current time

And you can apply any of the virtual function on these fields, as usual

Andrey Pykhantsev · Answer

after trying to get formatDateAs() and now() to work, got a way around it by

1. creating a separate field date that stores the epoch time

2. using two separate IFTTT macros to first assign current time to date and later to use that field value to format it using

[entry.name.upperCase.trunc(2)]-[entry.time.formatDate(yyyyMMdd)]

Andrey Pykhantsev · Answer

It works the same way as the functions I tried, namely output is in EPOCH format, not "yyyyMMddHHmm".

Seems that it only does it when I'm trying to get the current timestamp using

[now]

or

now()

P.S.: the form should grab the moment the form is approved, not the time it was created. I'm using IFTTT macro with onModified event and setting this parameter on the entry field.