Date field on document record - make it required for users to fill out or default to no date?

Hi, We want to know if there is a way to make the date field on the document record default to blank field thus making it required for users to fill out/change? The problem we are having is that many users are forgetting to change this date to reflect the date on the document/letter (firm policy) and so the date is defaulting to "today's date". Does anyone have any suggestions on how we can get a way to make sure users change this field?

 

Yes you just modify the document form template (or right click > customize field) to require the field where your date came from. Required form fields are highlighted yellow in a form.

But I am not sure if you can require the field to update already processed merge documents.

Does setting the Document form options at the Program Level to Automatcally Set Document Date to File Date solve your problem?

Thanks for posting - ideally we do not want any value in this field; we don't want it to default to any date (either the file date or today's date). It does not seem that we can customize this field to have no value in it by default. Given this, do you know if we can set this field to be blank and just required?

There is no way to do this in Time Matters. To accomplish this, the easiest way would be to use a keyboard macro program. Search here and you wil lfind some old posts. In essence when the form is opened a keyboard program would delete the date field.

If you are not interested in that option..... you could set up some quicktabs to review other people's document records. As an example, if you are scanning pleadings and you want the date to be the date of the pleading (not the date it was scanned). You could set up a quick tab that looks at the scanned pleadings only and put the create date beside the document date. A quick run through the list will show all of those that match.  There are lots of ways to search through the document list.

If you wanted to get even more complex, you could use a user defined field and create a calculation that subtracts the document records date from the create date. Those that have a result of 0, would mean the create date is equal to the document date.

As consultants, we face this issue. Our experience is a little follow up goes a long way. If you monitor this and remind people for a while, they will remember. This is a place where exposing the document list is a great asset in Time Matters.

Matt