I’m trying to generate a number like this for say, a flight number.
I want daily flight numbers to be something like this:
date of flight + (append, not add) 1 (2, 3, 4, 5 etc) eg: 130820211, 130820212, 120820213 etc
In order to do this, I need to search for that date’s flights, get the flight number, but strip away the date part to be left with the last number to add to. Is there a way to do that? I’ve been messing with it for ages but can’t figure it out within the confines of the expression field.
I think, if I were you, I would simplify the process. Since you are creating the number yourself, just save the number as two separate fields. One with the full number put together, and the other field as the unique number separate from the number.
For example:
Flight number: 130820211
End Number: 11
Then you can just reference that end number without doing a truncate or regex or anything complicated like that.
Sometimes we make things more difficult than they have to be. Keep it simple if you can.
There are a bunch of ways to do this, this was just one suggestion.
I may have got around it by doing the following, though I doubt this if very efficient.
Flight has multiple fields, but of note:
Flight Date
Number
Flight Number
Flight Date (date)= takes date from the booking hours and minutes changed to 0
Number (number)= Do a search for flights where Flight Date = booking date hours and minutes changed to 0 sorted by Number, descending :first item + 1 (or basically find the latest flight number on this date then add 1)
Flight Number (TEXT field) = Flight Date formatted as ddmmyyyy :append Number
I ended up with 130820211 like I wanted, though this isn’t really how I’d like to do this…seems very intensive. Since the Flight Number depends on the Number and Flight Date it has to be a second workflow which is annoying. I wish there was a way to do that all in one workflow as there have been a few cases where I have a piece of data that is reliant upon data that hasn’t been created yet but i’d like it to be all in one workflow.
