Date and time fields

A Date and Time field contains a date and a time. Values are stored in the database in milliseconds. A Date and Time field uses all the usual field properties, which are described in "Field properties". There are additional properties.

Select the Relative property to indicate that this date and time is not fixed. A relative date and time is a date and time that is not bound to any time zone. For example, the beginning of the new year in 2011 was January 1, 2011 00:00. That does not represent a fixed point in time, rather it represents a particular point of time in the context of a time zone.

A benefit of a relative date and time is that an administrator can define it and reuse it many times. For example, an administrator defines a calendar named US Holiday to contain New Year's Day, President's Day, Independence Day, and other standard holiday observances. The administrator can then use the US Holiday calendar for resources in any of the time zones covered by the US and know that at runtime a relative time is used in the context of the resource and its time zone.

The Default Value property is used to specify a fixed or relative initial value for the field. To specify that the initial value of the field should be relative to the current date and time, select the radio button marked Current Date & Time.

You can select the default value to be the specified number of days, hours, minutes, or seconds before or after the current time. What determines whether it is before or after the current time is whether the value selected in the drop-down list is + or -.

To specify that the initial value should be a fixed date and time, select the lower radio button and enter a date and time into the field next to it.

The Formula Type property is visible only if the Formula check box is checked. If the Formula check box is checked, it means that the value of the field will be determined by a formula and the field is always read only. The details of how to specify a formula are described in Formulas.

Date and Time fields mapped into Date fields are truncated to midnight (00:00:00).