Date Entry on Mobile Devices

[mykrobinson]

Me again with a question on this app i'm working on for the clinic. So far things are working out pretty well, but one complaint is how dates are entered in the app. It's nice and easy in a web browser, but on a mobile device, it's a rather unpleasant experience

Is there an option to enable the ability to type in dates instead of having to painfully select with the phone UI? Considering that most of the patients are elderly, the time it takes to scroll through the years list then still have to click multiple times to get to the right month adds up. I'd love to be able to just type in the date like i can in the browser mockup of the tablet mode.

Thanks

[Rafael_ANEIC-PY]

Hello @mykrobinson, I don't think there's a way to change the way AppSheet receives values on entry for mobile devices, but there might be a way to work around it.

You could let them write in their DOB splitting day, month and year, so they write each one in different columns, and then use another column to combine those into a proper date, it's not ideal as far as databases go but it might be easier for your users.

[mykrobinson]

not a bad idea 🤔

[Joseph_Seddik]

Put this in Suggested Values: LIST(TODAY())

[mykrobinson]

i tried this, and didn't like the way it presented, unfortunately. My thought is the providers will not like having to manually enter the / in order for the typed dated to be accepted, otherwise you get "invalid date format." Really wish i could just make it behave the way it does in the tablet emulator in the browser. I think i will try @Rafael_ANEIC-PY 's suggestion. Perhaps have a number based entry for month, day, and year, then a virtual column to concatenate them.

Thinking out loud as always, but i bet the next comment will be regarding the appearance if done that way, because to my knowledge, i cannot make those columns appear side by side with a slash in between the fields, can i.... 🤔

[Rafael_ANEIC-PY]

If you split the DOB into 3 different columns then they will be shown one after another vertically, not side by side.

Well, you could make them add the date as text in a single column, and then converting that to a proper date, but there's a catch.

You have to make sure your users type in the date in the exact same format that you want.

That could be done using a very complete valid_if() expression I believe.

By the way, did you try what Joseph suggested?

[Steve · Accepted solution]

The date "picker" is provided by the browser (for the web app) or the operation system (for the native app), not by AppSheet itself. There is no way within AppSheet to affect the appearance or behavior of the date picker. Same for the time picker, and the date+time picker.

[mykrobinson]

thank you for the confirmation.