In the first post on designing universe prompts I talked about the idea of having a default date value present in a prompt. In case you don’t want to read the entire post, here is the executive summary:
You can’t do it, sorry.
At the end of that post I mentioned something called a “magic date” that I frequently use in my universes to get past this limitation. That’s my subject for today.
Problem Definition
I have a date prompt in my universe. I would like to be able to provide a default value of today’s date. This would allow my users to click-n-go on the report without having to update the date value each time. It is also essential for scheduled reports, which is something I didn’t really touch on last time. When I schedule a report, I have to provide values for every prompt. I have a long series of posts on how to create some dynamic date objects that can be used for scheduling, but those were not prompts.
In a nutshell: I need a way to accept a prompt value and convert it to today’s date for user convenience and for scheduling. Can I make that happen?
Continue reading “Using a “Magic Date” Value in Prompts”
I have seen this question come up frequently on BOB lately. And if the question keeps coming up, it becomes an easy idea for a blog post. That way, once I document a concept or a solution I have somewhere consistent to link to. The short answer to the question, unfortunately, is no. But let’s investigate and explain a bit further than that, shall we?
Continue reading “How Can I Make “Today” My Default Prompt Value?”
There has been quite a bit of speculation on BOB about what the future holds for the annual conference. As many readers will know, I have been a very active participant in the conference for more than a decade. I attended my first conference in 1995 and delivered my first presentation in 1996. I have been honored to have been selected as a presenter every year since.
But that was then, what about now?
Continue reading “What’s Happening to the Annual Conference?”
I apologize for deviating from my normal content, but I had to share this. Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy, Angel, and Firefly) is going to release a new musical… online! If you are a Buffy fan and remember the musical number (from season 4, I think) then you have to see this. It looks great… they have Neil Patrick Harris as the mad scientist, and Nathon Fillion as the superhero.
The teaser goes something like this:
For every day… there is a night.
For every world… there is an underworld
And for every hero… there is…. this guy?
This should be great! 😆
