Datetime field is not behaving properly

Question

Hello All, 
 
 I recently encountered an issue related to datetime picket control. I'm using an editable grid to show editable fields to users, Other editable components are working fine except a!datetime() control. When user selects a date and loose focus to select time between that instance the value entered for date is getting disappear. However if we select the date second time its not disappearing or if we select time first then also its value remains inside the control. Can someone please tell me why is this happening?

Larry Nguyen · Accepted Answer

What version of Appian are you using? On 18.1, the date portion of the dateTimeField persists even if you haven't specified a saveInto when you unfocus it. If you haven't specified a saveInto and also enter the time portion and unfocus it will clear both fields. Here is a video showing what I am doing: 
 
 www.screencast.com/.../YmAy3FSjdt 
 
You can see I am able to click off of the date portion of the field, even after entering a date, and even focus into other components on the form without losing the date in the field.

viveku3486 · Answer

Hi Larry, 
 
First of all I would like to thank u for your efforts and appreciate your creativity of providing guidance to us. Its a very unique way to explain something via video, I have ever seen here on Appian Community. Now here comes the problem by which that issue happened 
 
- Basically I was creating a dynamic grid where user has the facility to update any item as well as add new rows 
- So to accomplish this functionality, I used array of CDT i.e cdt inside cdt 
- Its structure was something like {index,cdt(list of row element)), Where index indicates the current row and cdt was list of key value pairs to be displayed on that particular row 
- So when user was trying to update values into multiple fields quickly, At that time I guess appian got confused and it completely vanishes the entered values. 
- Thats why we have used completely flattened cdt and by using that I created the grid again. It resolved my issue.

ravalik · Answer

Hi Viveku, 
 As far as I know date time field executes only when both the values are filled.I can suggest a work around for this as, you can pass now() to the rule input.So that date and time both will get executed in saveInTo.You can also provide some default value so that user can check that .If the user doesn't want anything you can remove the default value.I really don't know how far I described your use case,if you feel this as meaningful you can work on it:) 
 
Thanks, 
ravalik