The Date Time action

The Date Time action node allows you to perform actions based on dates and times within your workflow.

 It’s commonly used to calculate SLAs, set deadlines, add or subtract time, or stamp events with the current date.

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Configuration 

To set up the Date Time action:

• Add the node to your workflow, ensuring it is connected to a Starting action or another Action node. 
  • Click on the node to open the Properties panel.

Mandatory fields

The Operation field is mandatory and this determines the operation you want to do. 

There are 3 operations to choose from:

• Add time to date

• Get current date

• Calculate difference

Depending on your chosen operation, the Properties panel will change to show the relevant fields.

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1. Add time to date

Use this when you want to add (or subtract) a specific amount of time to an existing date.

For example:
“You must attend this job within 4 hours of receiving the request.”

To configure this operation:

• Select the Add time to date operation from the dropdown
  
  
• Enter the date you want to manually or insert a variable in the Date field (e.g., the timestamp which has been extracted from an incoming email or the current date/time which has been defined as a variable using another instance of the Date/Time node).
  
  
• Enter amount manually or as a variable, i.e. the number you want to add or subtract in the Amount field. 
• Choose a unit from the dropdown in the Unit field (seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years).

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2. Get current date

Use this when you need to timestamp an event or compare “now” to another date.

To configure this operation:

• Choose the Get current date operation

No other inputs are required. The node simply outputs the current date/time when the workflow runs.

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3. Calculate difference

Use this when you need to calculate the time difference between two dates.

For example:
“How long did it take between receiving the email and attending the job?”

To configure this operation:

• Select the Calculate difference operation
• Insert a variable into the Date 1 field e.g. incoming email time
• Insert variable into the Date 2 field e.g., must attend time, extracted from the email body using an Extract Text node
• Choose the unit (seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years) in the Unit field.

The output is a numerical value that is the calculation of the difference between Date 1 and Date 2. This is perfect for SLA monitoring or to understand the time between a job request and the time the customer asks for the job to be attended to.

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Output

Once the Date Time node runs, it will return one of two possible outcomes:

• Complete – The operation requested completed successfully
• Failed – The operation requested failed.

 

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Automating job scheduling according to SLA

Smith & Co receive an urgent job request email from an existing customer at 12:15pm. 

When a job request is marked as urgent, they work towards the SLA that an engineer will attend the site within 4 hours of the email being received. 

When automating their job creation workflows using Build Concierge, they can build a workflow that:

• Uses the Incoming Email Starting action to forward urgent jobs to this workflow in Build Concierge.
• Add an Extract Text node to extract the relevant job details.
• Use the Date Time node to extract the time the email was received, and add 4 hours to the time, producing the required attendance time for the creation of the job. In this case, it would be 4.15pm.
• Use the Create a Job in BigChange action to create a job in BigChange at 4.15pm; and 
• Add a Send Email action to send an email to the engineering team with the details of the job.

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