Date and Time

Monkedo supports Date and Time data types, allowing precise handling of points in time. These data types are essential for managing dates, deadlines, appointments, and more.

A Date in Monkedo represents a specific point in time, including year, month, day, hour, minute, second, and even millisecond. For example, "10/29/2024 14:25:00" captures a precise moment.

Dates can come from various sources:

• App components, where they are part of a record, such as a creation or meeting date.

• Monkedo's date components, which can create, modify, or calculate date values.

If a component expects a date input, you can provide it in 2 ways:

1. Automation Flow: Connect the date output of another component to the date input of the component you use.

2. Info Panel: Manually enter a date value in the info panel. In the info panel, if you choose to set the value manually, an input box becomes visible and you can select a date by clicking this input as shown below.

Monkedo provides a variety of operations for dates, such as:

• Adding or subtracting time intervals (e.g., adding 2 weeks to a date).

• Calculating the difference between two dates (e.g., how many days until a deadline).

• Extracting specific details like the day of the week, month, or hour.

Often, dates are stored or displayed in text format, especially in spreadsheets and apps. If a date is provided as text, you’ll see its type as "Text" in Monkedo. Examples from some apps are given below. Notice the type is indicated as Text.

Format of the date depends on the app and related field on the record. But don't worry. You can convert these to any format you want with Monkedo.

If you want to perform date operations (like adding days, getting a specific detail, etc.), you need to convert these text values to Date type. Date arithmetic cannot be done on text values. The Text to Date component (shown below) handles this conversion. You provide a text value, choose the date format and timezone, and it outputs a Date value.

Similarly, if you want to display a date in a text message (like an email), you need to convert it from a Date to a Text format. The Format Date component (shown below) lets you choose how the date appears, such as "Month/Day/Year Hour:Minute" or another custom format. You can change the order of the details and choose which details to be shown.

If you forget to format a date before using it in a text message, you might see a format like "Wed Oct 31 2024 14:25:55 GMT+0000". In this case, you should use Format Date component to get the format you want and then use the formatted date in the text.

The Time data type represents a specific time of day, such as "14:25:55," without linking to a particular date. It's useful for representing times in a day, like work hours. Similar to Dates, Time values can be set in 2 ways:

1. Automation Flow: Connect the time output of another component to the time input of the component you use.

2. Info Panel: Manually enter a time value in the info panel. In the info panel, if you choose to set the value manually, an input box become visible and you can enter a time value as shown below.

Monkedo offers various components to create, format, and manipulate dates and times:

Fetches the current date and time, which can be useful for time-sensitive automation, like recording when a task was created.

Lets you manually create a date by specifying the year, month, day, hour, minute, etc. This is handy for scheduling future events or deadlines.

Use this to add or subtract intervals (like days, weeks, or hours) from a date. For example, if a task has a 5-day deadline, you can add 5 days to the creation date to set a due date.

Calculates the time interval between two dates, in units like days, hours, or minutes. This can be used to find how much time has passed since a certain event or how long until an upcoming one.

Extracts specific details from a date, like the year, month, day of the week, or hour. This is useful when you only need part of a date for processing, such as the day of the month.

Timestamp is a universal format to represent dates a numbers. This compoennt converts numerical timestamps to Date values.

Converts a date into a text string with the format you choose, allowing you to display dates in the desired format for messages or reports.

Monkedo offers even more components for working with dates and times. You can explore the full list in the editor under the Date and Time categories.

By leveraging these components and operations, you can handle time-based data efficiently and accurately in your automations.