Tracking a Date & Time Field's History

Hi Kayla Ebert,

In this case, the issue is not the field type, so good news: this is going to work!

The issue is that calculated field functions are often limited in the data types they can process.

The great news is that there are functions that change the data types!

Try this:

ifElse(contains($history_of_calls_logged_c,concat(toString($last_phonecall_c))),$name_history_c,concat($history_of_calls_logged_c," ",toString($last_phonecall_c)))

The toString() function takes the input and changes it to datatype String so the concat() function can then process it.

This might not work exactly as written (because I did not test this), so come back if it does not with any change (or lack of change) in the error, and we can go from there.

I hope this helps!

This worked, thank you so much!!! I had to make a small change (replaced $name_history_c with $history_of_calls_logged_c in the latter part of the formula. It was grabbing the contact name at first, haha!) 

I'll monitor the field over the next month as see how it performs. I so wish it would input commas in-between values as additional calls are added, simply to make the data easier to read. Is that possible?

I think I spoke too soon. I did another test and the following text populated the History of Calls Logged when I logged a call at 3:54 :-( 

Hi Kayla Ebert,

You can put punctuation in " " when concatenating.

In other words:

concat("first"," ","second) will output: first second

WHEREAS 

concat("first",", ","second) will output: first, second

If you wish to add a comma at the end of the entry instead, you can:

concat("first"," ","second,",") will output: first second,

I hope this helps!

Hi Patrick, thank you for the update! I did speak to soon when I said that the formula was working correctly. I logged a test call at 3:54 and the previously blank field "History of Calls Logged" populated with the following text. I expected it to populate with "2019-01-11 3:54 PM" but got "2018-12-31 03:00 PM 2019-01-11 04:00 PM 2019-01-11T15:52:53-5:00 instead :-(

Hi Kayla Ebert,

My first impression is that your record is being saved three times during the save event. This can happen unseen if, for example, you have a logic hook or workflow that is reacting to the save event. This is certainly a risk when concatenating a field like this.

I imagine you have considered meeting this need through a feature other than Calculated Fields. If so, what were the factors that led you to rule out using Advanced Workflow, for example?

From what I could gather, I believed I could gather a phone call "timesheet" using the calculated fields but I'll be honest, not sure where to begin if I were trying to use an Advanced Workflow. Messing around with it now :-)