topic RE: Previous Date Logic in Product Forum

Previous Date Logic

sandeshtope — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 13:18:00 GMT

I need to write two dates into a text field in the format dd.MM.yyyy. The start date should be the nearest previous 15th, and the end date should be today's date. Any tips on how to do this in Blue Prism? Your advice would be a big help! Thanks!

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Sandy P
RPA Developer
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RE: Previous Date Logic

Athiban_Mahamathi — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 14:01:00 GMT

Hi Sandy,

You can try something like below.

Start Date:

Today :

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Athiban Mahamathi - https://www.linkedin.com/in/athiban-mahamathi-544a008b/
Technical Consultant,
SimplifyNext,
Singapore
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RE: Previous Date Logic

sandeshtope — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 14:51:00 GMT

if today's date is, for instance, 31st October, I want the start date to be the nearest previous 15th, which means it should be 15th October. How can I handle this situation ?

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Sandy P
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RE: Previous Date Logic

Athiban_Mahamathi — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 15:16:00 GMT

Hi Sandy,

You can use a decision stage to find if the today's date is crossed current month 15th. If yes, then you can get the current month 15th date else you can get the previous month 15th date.

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Athiban Mahamathi - https://www.linkedin.com/in/athiban-mahamathi-544a008b/
Technical Consultant,
SimplifyNext,
Singapore
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RE: Previous Date Logic

sandeshtope — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 15:25:00 GMT

Hi Atibhan ,

What to provide in decision stage ?

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Sandy P
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RE: Previous Date Logic

sandeshtope — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 05:38:00 GMT

I tried , but it did not worked !

How can we compare date ?

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Sandy P
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RE: Previous Date Logic

Mukeshh_k — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 08:44:00 GMT

Hi @Sandy P - What if today's date is 01-November - do you still want 15th of October ?

ToNumber(Left(Today(),2))>15 - Where you can decide to check the previous nearest 15th. i.e. this gives you False decision -

If False - Calculation Stage -

If True :

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Regards,

Mukesh Kumar - Senior Automation Developer

NHS, England, United Kingdom, GB
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RE: Previous Date Logic

sandeshtope — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 10:30:00 GMT

Hey Mukesh

It worked ! Thanks a lot !!!

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Sandy P
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RE: Previous Date Logic

Michael_S — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 11:04:00 GMT

Great work team 👏 Congrats @Mukesh Kumar on the best answer!

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💙 Michael
(I'm part of the SS&C Blue Prism Community Team)
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RE: Previous Date Logic

MichealCharron — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 13:21:00 GMT

Sorry, I just have to point out that the answer @Mukesh Kumar gave will be incorrect at least 12 times during the year. For example; the date "11/11/2023" will give you "15/15/2023" with the Replace function, which will cause an error in the ToDate function.

For any regional date formats, you can use the following for days under 16:

AddMonths(MakeDate(15, FormatDate(Today(), "MM"), FormatDate(Today(), "yyyy")),-1)

Else

MakeDate(15, FormatDate(Today(), "MM"), FormatDate(Today(), "yyyy"))

Addendum:
For any regional date formats, you can use the following for the decision:

ToNumber(FormatDate(Today(), "dd")) < 16

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Micheal Charron
Senior Manager
RBC
America/Toronto
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RE: Previous Date Logic

Mukeshh_k — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 15:51:00 GMT

@MichealCharron - My bad - This scenario slipped out of my testing mind, thanks for pointing this out and correcting. Cheers !!

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Regards,

Mukesh Kumar - Senior Automation Developer

NHS, England, United Kingdom, GB
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RE: Previous Date Logic

rsrivastava2 — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 21:54:00 GMT

Hi Mike,

That was nice catch, I was about to correct the same.

But still, I think I'll just share my approach as well, which I think is Simpler and correct in one scenario!

AddMonths(ToDate(FormatDate(Today(), "MM/15/yyyy")), -1)

ToDate(FormatDate(Today(), "MM/15/yyyy")

The one scenario is that Blue Prism works on mm/dd/yyyy format and ToDate("15/10/2023") will fail. (Do let me know what you think)

Hope this Helps!

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WeitghtRPAMatey
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RE: Previous Date Logic

MichealCharron — Fri, 03 Nov 2023 14:14:00 GMT

@Rohit Srivastava

The hard coded value...nice.

As an aside; most people don't realize that you can put almost anything in the string for a "Format" parameter in the FormatDate() function. Even formatting characters can be used in the string to represent their literal values as long as they are enclosed in double quotes.

For eg., the following string would be unusable to come out with a folder structure from a single FormatDate() function:

But using double quotes and escaping back-slashes with another back-slash makes it work:

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Micheal Charron
Senior Manager
RBC
America/Toronto
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