I'm trying to automatically highlight records that have been added or changed within a set time frame. I'd like to be able to set a certain time frame, either a specific date and time (ie, highlight everything changed after 08/30/18 10:20:30) or a time frame (highlight everything changed in the last 31 hours). I figured it will be a conditional formating thing, but I can't figure out the script for it.
If you are using conditional formatting then your calculation (no script) would be
//highlight everything changed after 08/30/18 10:20:30 (hard coded)
timestampModified > Timestamp ( Date ( 8 ; 30 ; 2018 ) ; Time ( 10 ; 20 ; 30 ) )
//highlight everything changed after 08/30/18 10:20:30, where timestamp is in a global field
timestampModified > globalTimestampField
//highlight everything changed in the last 31 hours (31x60x60 seconds)
recordModifiedTimestamp > Get ( CurrentTimestamp ) - (31*60*60)
Where the statements are true, the conditional format you have selected will apply.
Are you looking for a solution where the user selects whether highlighting is based on a number of hours in the past or a specific start time? In that case, you could feed that information into global fields and add some conditional logic (If/Case) to the above statements to determine which option the user is asking for.
Seems like highlighting the recently edited or added records would get lost in the sea of records in the table. In addition, every time you add an unstored calculation to a layout (i.e. Conditional Formatting, Hide Object, etc), it slows down just a little more when navigating between records. One unstored calculation isn't a big deal but if you have some already, it could be the straw that broke the camels back. Anyhow, I'd recommend just writing a find script and run it every time you want to see the recent records. I think this is all you need.
Enter Find Mode [ ]
Set Field [MYTABLE::StampCreate; ">=" & Get(CurrentTimestamp) - 111600]
New Record/Request
Set Field [MYTABLE::StampModify; ">=" & Get(CurrentTimestamp) - 111600]
Perform Find [ ]
Assuming you have a Last Modified Timestamp field in the underlying table, and it's set to automatically update any time a record is modified, conditional formatting would do the trick. You could make it fancier by adding in some globals that you set either manually or by script that would essentially turn your formatting on or off. You could have a button that runs a script that prompts the user to select a method (modified since specific date/time or modified in past XX hours), takes the user's selection to set a global variable accordingly, and then prompts the user for either a date/time or a number of hours, based on their selection. Your conditional formatting calculations can be set to only apply when that global variable has a value and the last modified date falls within the user-selected timeframe.
The only real downside, as mentioned by others, is that you're adding an unstored calc with does add some overhead. That may or may not be an issue for you, as it really depends on your solution's complexity and number of records.
This option would give you the ability to vary the highlighting based on your particular needs, especially since it sounds like from your post that need that flexibility.
You wouldn't need a script, you can set everything in the conditional formatting:
These will return a true value whenever your modified timestamp is greater than or equal to the timestamp you set, or the current timestamp minus 111,600 (the number of seconds in 31 hours) respectively.