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Show Upcoming Birthdays

Lesley Updated by Lesley

Scenario

You would like to show and be alerted about upcoming birthdays.

Requirements

If this your first time creating an app, you'll need to know some basics about adding tables, fields, pages, and views. You can start by reading our Builder Basics section. 

Other good resources can be found in our About Your Database and Working With Pages sections of the knowledge base.

Steps

Add a Date Field for the Birthday

  1. Add a Date/Time field named "Birthday" to a table. We will use a Person table for this example.
  2. Set the Field’s defaults to "none" and make the Field required.

Add an Equation Field for the Birthday Month

  1. Add an Equation field named "Birthday Month".
  2. Set the Equation Type to "Numeric" and leave the rest of the options as the defaults.
  3. Use the following equation which uses the function getDateMonth() which extracts the numeric month of the year: getDateMonth({Birthday}).

Your equation field should look like this:

You can read more about using equations and date functions with equations here.

Add an Equation Field for the Current Date

  1. Add an Equation field named "Current Date".
  2. Set the Equation Type to "Date", the Date Type to "days", and the Result Type to "Date". Leave the rest of the options as their defaults.
  3. Use the following equation which uses the function currentTime() which pulls in current date: currentTime()

Your Equation field should look like this:

Add an Equation Field for the Current Month

  1. Add an Equation Field named "Current Month".
  2. Set the Equation Type to "Numeric" and leave the rest of the options as the defaults.
  3. Use the following equation which uses the function getDateMonth() which extracts the numeric month of the year: getDateMonth({Current Date}).

Your Equation Field should look like this:

Add an Equation Field for the Next Month

  1. Add an Equation Field named "Next Month".
  2. Set the Equation Type to "Numeric" and leave the rest of the options as the defaults.
  3. Use the following equation which uses the function getDateMonth() which extracts the numeric month of the year and adds a value of +1 to the current date's month: getDateMonth({Current Date})+1.

Your Equation Field should look like this:

Add a Yes/No Field for Birthday in Current Month

  1. Add a Yes/No field named "Birthday" in Current Month.
  2. Leave the default as "No" since the majority of birthdays would not be in the current month.
  3. Add two conditional rules to this field so that when the birthday month is equal to the current month, the value is updated to "Yes".
  • When "Every Record", Value Set "to a custom value" "No".
  • When "Birthday Month" "is" "Current Month", Value Set "to a custom value" "Yes".

The conditional rules on your Yes/No field should look like this:

Add a Yes/No Field for Birthday in Next Month

  1. Add a Yes/No field called "Birthday" in Next Month.
  2. Leave the default as "No" since the majority of birthdays would not be in the current month.
  3. Add two conditional rules to this field so that when the birthday month is equal to the current month, the value is updated to "Yes".
  • When "Every Record", Value Set "to a custom value" "No".
  • When "Birthday Month" "is" "Next Month", Value Set "to a custom value" "Yes".

The conditional rules on your Yes/No field should look like this:

You can read more about using conditional rules here.

Optional Features

Using Scheduled Tasks to Send Reminder Emails

For Pro plans and above, scheduled tasks could be used to send a monthly email for those people who had birthdays in the coming month or the next month.

Displaying a Grid for This Month's and Next Month's Birthdays

Source filters could be used to create one grid to show only this month's birthdays and a second table to show next month's birthdays.

How did we do?

How To Number Line Items

How to Extract the Start and End Dates from a Date/Time Field

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