A customer recently contacted me with an interesting question.

They were using a SharePoint task list to help schedule jobs for field engineers but rather than have a Start Date and End Date field they wanted to have a Start Date and Duration field and automatically work out the End Date.

So End Date = Start Date + Duration

They were then planning to display this using Planner in the By Category view which is idea for resource booking as it makes it easy to see when a resource is booked or free (SharePoints built in gantt chart can’t do this swimlane style of view and doesn’t support using calculated columns).

Now this is easy to do if the Duration is specified in days – in fact you just use the equation above – but what if Duration is in hours or minutes?

First port of call is this page from Microsoft showing examples of common date time formula you can use in SharePoint calculated columns hmmm, adding days OK… adding months Check… adding years OK too….but nothing about hours. Back to the drawing board.

The key bit of knowledge is that SharePoint stores all date/time values internally as the number of days since Jan 1st, 1900. So the number 100.5 in a date/time field is 100 days and 12 hours from 1st Jan 1900 at 00:00

Armed with this we get the following formula (where Duration is in hours) =[Start Date]+([Duration]/24) So what’s happening here? ([Duration]/24) turns the number of hours in Duration to fractions of a day (e.g. 1 hr is 0.0416 of a day) Then we add that number to the Start Date and finally as our calculated column is defined as a date/time field SharePoint is turning the number (e.g. 40,296.50) back into a readable date/time value. Job done! Tips This will work with Durations greater than 24 or even 1/2 hours etc. If you want to specify Duration in minutes then instead of /24 above you would use /1440 (the number of minutes in a day). You can use this for anything that has a duration – tasks, service jobs, meetings, flights, equipment booking etc. Further reading Common Date Time formulas for SharePoint

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There may be times when you want to display timeline or category information from more than one list column in a gantt chart. For example in the chart below we have taken information from the “priority” and “title” columns of a list to populate the category labels.

With Planner you can show multiple columns in the Category or on the Timeline of a Gantt chart by using a calculated column to merge fields together.

For example to merge Priority and Title columns together you would :-

• From your list click Settings > Create Column
• Set a name such as “Category”
• Choose Calculated for the type
• In formula enter (where [Title] etc is the name of the columns you want to merge)

      =[Priority] & " : " & [Title]

• Uncheck ‘Add to default view’ checkbox if you don’t want this appearing for the normal list view.
• In Planner you can now select this column.

You can merge multiple columns together, for example :-

   =[Priority] & " : " & [Title] & " - " & [Assigned To]

You can also use SharePoint standard functions and formula (many similar to excel) such as :-

   =Text([Start Time],"mmm-yyyy") " : " & [Title]

Which would prefix the Title with Month and year, like so  October-2009 : Your title here

To display the the duration in days you could use

   =DATEDIF([Start Time],[End Time],"d") & " Days"

See some more examples of common functions

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Back in the day of Windows SharePoint Server 2 and SharePoint Server 2003 you couldn’t use [Today] in Filters.

For example if you tried to setup a filter like this to show items added in the last 7 days

Created is greater than [Today] – 7

You would receive an error “Filter Value is not a valid date” when clicking OK

This lead to all sorts of inventive work arounds including calculated columns to add 7 days onto the Created date and the trick to use [Today] in calculated columns.

After kicking up a bit of a storm with some ill considered remarks in a post explaining the limitations of the [Today] trick I realised I had some of my own old posts that needed updating. Live by the sword…

<tongue-in-cheek> The Truth about using [Today] in Filters </tongue-in-cheek>

In WSS 2 / SPS 2003 you could not use a filter containing a [Today] formula as shown above.

In WSS 3 / MOSS 2007 you can. If you try

Created is greater than [Today] – 7

you see a similar error -

Try taking out the spaces…

Created is greater than [Today]-7

Yup, that easy.

Just to make clear – you can use other fields. For example to to show all the tasks due in the next 7 days or overdue.

Due Date is less than [Today]+7 AND Status is not equal to Completed

If you are writing CAML queries then see this post about using the OffsetDays attribute.

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Introduction

We discussed in a previous article how to customise SharePoint’s built in Task List and briefly looked at the power of Views with Filters. In this article we will build upon that by demonstrating some advanced use of Filters.

This article assumes that you are already familiar with Views and Filters – if not please review the previous article.

Overdue Tasks

To show a task lists Overdue tasks use the following Filter :- Status – is not equal to – Completed And Due Date – is less than – [Today] Note – [Today] is a special marker that SharePoint understands as the current date.

My Overdue Tasks

Add the following to the Overdue Tasks filter Assigned To – is equal to – [Me] Note – [Me] is a special marker that SharePoint understands as the current user.

Items added in Last 7 Days

It would be nice to be able to enter something like

• Created – is less than – [Today] – 7

in the filter, but alas its not quite that simple!

[EDIT - This work around was written in early 2006 and WSS 2 / SPS 2003 wouldn't accept this - in WSS 3 / MOSS 2007 you can now use a FILTER formula like [Today]-7 as long as you keep the spaces out!]

The workaround is to create a Calculated column and then filter on that column.

Select Modify Settings and Columns, then Add a new columnGive the column name something like “Filter 7 Days” and select a Calculated column
Enter a suitable DescriptionIn the Formula box enter “=Created+7″Choose Date and Time format and Date Only Clear Add to default view as we don’t want this field to appear on any of the views
Create a new viewSetup a filter to show only :- Filter 7 Days – is greater than or equal to – [Today]

Items Due in the next 7 Days

[EDIT - This work around was written in early 2006 and WSS 2 / SPS 2003 wouldn't accept this - in WSS 3 / MOSS 2007 you can now use a FILTER formula like [Due Date]-7 as long as you keep the spaces out!]

Select Modify Settings and Columns, then Add a new columnGive the column name something like “Filter Coming Due” and select a Calculated column
Enter a suitable DescriptionIn the Formula box enter “=Due Date-7″Choose Date and Time format and Date Only Clear Add to default view as we don’t want this field to appear on any of the views
Create a new viewSetup a filter to show only :- Status – is not equal to – Completed And Filter Coming Due – is less than or equal to – [Today] And Due Date – is greater than or equal to – [Today] This will ensure that the view only displays Uncompleted items that are due in the next 7 Days but are not Overdue.

Items due in the current Calendar Month

If you need to filter for a Calendar Week/Month (rather than a rolling 7/30 day period) then this post details how

How To Use Filters in SharePoint to show items in the current Calendar Month

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