David--
Set the form design field option for date “DisplayOnly”
to false and the option for “ShowButton” to true. If you show
the button, your users should click the three dots to get the date assistant
and enter begin and end date info just as they would in the standard data entry
display.
We use lots of forms and haven’t had
any trouble with people making changes to the date label without entering the
search dates, but I think most of our forms users became accustomed to the date
assistant setup in the GS data entry mode before they started using custom
forms. Can you get everyone started in standard data entry first?
I wish there were a way to keep them from
typing in the date label but still show the button, but the button goes away
when you tell it to display only arrrgh.
--Jessica
______________________
Jessica Milby
TMS Systems Manager
Phone: 215-684-7283
Fax: 215-235-0035
From: The Museum
System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Aylsworth, David
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2008
11:49 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Search dates in forrm
designer
Have
any of you who have been designing your own forms had
problems with putting the “Date” field onto
the form? I’m concerned that it doesn’t seem possible to add
the “Begin Date” and “End
Date”, so if people update the date field, they do so without updating
the dates that I have been telling people to use for searching.
Or
am I missing an obvious way to search by date of object? We’ve got
a fair number of objects in the collection that the official date is
“not
dated”, but users still want them to come up if they are doing a search
for works from a particular time period. Putting “circa”
dates into the main date field seems to block them from coming up in a search
by date range, as do phrases like “nineteenth century”,
etc. That’s why I really LOVE the “begin
date” and “end date” fields…
Our
previous database did not have them, and our conversion to TMS
seemed erratic with what records got begin and end dates updated.
We’ve been making an effort to get them in there now, and have gotten
some success with getting people to search by them when they want a reliable
list of objects in a given range. I’m concerned that if I let them
enter a date without the automatic updating of begin and end date, that
we’ll have unreliable data again. I almost don’t want that
field available on the form if it doesn’t allow for entering
begin
and end dates.
Have
any of you wrestled with this problem already? I have a feeling that
I’m overlooking something very obvious again…
Thanks
as always!
David
Registrar for Collections
telephone: 713-639-7824
fax: 713-639-7780