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How To: Calculate Units Based on Duration

Many programs bill for units that are calculated based on duration. For example, programs may bill where 1 unit = 15 minutes of service time. The myEvolv Finance module handles those calculations to generate an accurate claim based on the duration entered in the service documentation but there may be times when you would like the calculated units to display on the form itself. There are no system form fields that do this for you but you can calculate the value with JavaScript and put it into a custom string field for display on the form.

calculated-units-form-fields

Duration Fields

The first step is to obtain the value in the duration field and we want to do this every time the duration changes on the form so in the On Change code for the duration field, we will use the following code:

var dur = getFormElement('duration');

Duration fields have masked inputs. When you put in ’30’, the myEvolv converts that to 00:30. When you put in ’90’, myEvolv converts it to 01:30. Therefore when you go to retrieve the value in the field, you are given an HH:MM string. The first task in calculating units is to convert this value back to an integer representing the number of minutes.

Split the String

We know the mask for the time is HH:MM so all we need to do is break the string into hours and minutes. We can do this using JavaScript’s split method:

var a = dur.split(':');

Here we have created a new variable that is an array containing hours and minutes. If the initial input was ’02:45′, a is now equal to an array that looks like this:

('2', '45')

Calculate Minutes

Now we have to perform a little math to get the number of minutes.

var mins = (+a[0] * 60 + (+a[1]));

Here, we take the hours in a and multiply that by 60 to get the number of minutes and then add it to the minutes in a. The ‘+’ signs tell JavaScript to cast the values in the array as numerical values so that math can be performed on them. Remember that the value we got from the duration field was a string.

Calculate Units

For the sake of this example, we will use 15 minutes = 1 unit. We simply need to divide mins by the number of minutes that makes 1 unit to get the number of units. However, there is one tricky bit. Often these billing scenarios do not allow for the billing of partial units. That means if the duration is ’00:35′, we want to calculate 2 units, not 2.333333333 units. So in addition to the division, we will also use JavaScript’s Math.floor method so that partial units are rounded down to the nearest whole.

var units = Math.floor(mins / 15);

If you need to calculate a different unit formula, you can do that by changing the number of minutes. For 1 hour = 1 unit, you just make the ’15’ into a ’60’.

Set the Units Value

Finally, we just need to put the calculated units into our units field. I am using a custom string type field.

setFormElement('udf_calculated_units', units);

With this code in place for the On Change event on the duration field, the correct number of units should calculate into the udf_calculated_units field whenever the duration value changes.

Full Code Block

var dur = getFormElement('duration');
var a = dur.split(':');
var mins = (+a[0] * 60 + (+a[1]));
var units = Math.floor(mins / 15);
setFormElement('udf_calculated_units', units);

How To: Make a Field Required Based on Client Age

I haven’t yet figured out a great way to only toggle the required attribute for a form field so the typical workaround for a conditionally required field to be used on a form is to toggle the form field to be required all of the time but enable or disable the field based on the condition you want. myEvolv ignores disabled fields when it goes to save, even if they are required so you can get most of the functionality you would want in this way. The one scenario you don’t get is if you want the field to remain enable but no longer be required. That’s where being able to have a ‘required rule’ attribute in the form designer would be nice. I am not convinced that there isn’t a way to do this through some clever JavaScript but I haven’t had the opportunity to try anything out yet.

Form Setup

The nice thing about this approach to the problem is that you don’t need to add any additional information to the form itself. A lot of the disable rules that you might learn will involve checking the value of other fields on the form. In this case, we are going to use a form function to check a value in the database behind the scenes.

All you need to do then is setup the field that you want to make required. Be sure to check “Required” for the form field.

required-form-attribute

Disable Rule

The key to using the Disable Rule attribute in the form designer is that you have to put in a conditional statement that will resolve to true when you want the field to be disabled. It’s somewhat counterintuitive but basically true = disabled and false = enabled.

For this example, we want to figure out if the client is under the age of 18. If the client is under the age of 18, we want to enable the field and require that the clinician enter some data. If the client is over 18, we want to disable the field. So our statement should look something like this:

[[client_age]] > 18

If [[client_age]] is under 18, the statement resolves to false, so the field will be enable. If the client is over 18, the statement resolves to true and the field will be disabled. Now we just need to get the client’s age.

The getDataValue Form Function

One of the JavaScript form functions that myEvolv has included in it is the getDataValue() function. It is used to get a value from a column in the database based on the value of another column in the same table. It takes five arguments, one is an optional conditional statement that we will not get into here. For our purposes, we need to supply it with 4 things:

  1. the table we want to get data from
  2. the column we will match on
  3. the column value we will match on
  4. the column value we want returned

myEvolv has a view called the client_personal_view which contains a calculated column for the client’s age, so the work of calculating an age has been done for us already.

So to get the age of the client we are entering a service for, we call the function like this:

getDataValue('client_personal_view', 'people_id', keyValue, 'age')

Here we are saying, get the value in the age column from the client_personal_view table in the row where the value of people_id column is equal to client_id of our current client. keyValue is a variable that myEvolv creates to hold the client_id when a service event is launched so we can use that in our JavaScript here instead of getting the value from the people_id form field, though that is also a valid option.

The full code for our disable rule is now:

getDataValue('client_personal_view', 'people_id', keyValue, 'age') > 18

Remember, the “>” and “<" signs are special characters so we have to use the ascii codes or else you will throw an error when the form loads in myEvolv.

How To: Prevent Backdated Entries

This may not be the only or even best way of preventing backdated entries in myEvolv but this method worked for me in a recent configuration.

Scenario

We wanted our prescribers to be able to provide a Script for Therapy Services to children in our preschool services program from myEvolv. Scripts for Service must have a start date on them and that start date needs to be no earlier than the date indicated on the child’s IEP but cannot but previous to the date that the script is being signed.

Further, an administrative assistant was going to be setting up the scripts in myEvolv and then the prescribers were going to be reviewing and e-signing them. We could imagine a scenario where the administrative assistant put a date, for example (9/1) on the script, believing that the prescriber would e-sign it on or before that date but the prescriber does not get into myEvolv to sign it until after that date has passed and then the script gets e-signed as though it were backdated. We needed a way to prevent the start date from ever being previous to the approved date while also allowing the start date to be in the future.

Form Design

script-for-service-form

The actual_date field was not suitable for use as the script start date since we needed to be able have multiple scripts that start on the same day for an individual. If I set the actual date as ‘Date Only’ Display Type Code, then two scripts in the same day would overlap at 00:00 AM. In this case I ended up creating a new database field for my Start Date and kept actual date on the form, receiving todaysDate() as the default value. This more or less prevents the service overlap problem. My new database field is named udf_rx_4_svc_start and is Date Only.

The end date on the script is using the expiration_date column and is also using the Display Type Code “Date Only”.

Before Save Code

The first task to accomplish is to prevent a user from saving the form with a backdate on it. For this I used the Before Save code property on the form. This code executes every time that the form is saved BUT because of the algorithm myEvolv uses to save form data, the udf_rx_4_svc_start column in the database will only be updated if the form field has been flagged as being modified. This is something that I was not able to figure out how to do in the Before Save code yet and is largely responsible for what feels like a more-complex-than-is-strictly-necessary-solution — more on that later.

First step is to get the value that is on the form field and turn it into a JavaScript date object.
var start = new Date(getFormElement('udf_rx_4_svc_start'));

Second step is to get today’s date and turn it into a JavaScript date object. todaysDate() is a myEvolv form function that you can use to get today’s date in a format suitable for placing in a myEvolv form field.
var today = new Date (todaysDate());

With that accomplished, we can compare the two date objects to see if the date on the form is previous to today’s date and if so, set the form field’s value to today’s date.
if(start <= today){{setFormElement('udf_rx_4_svc_start', todaysDate())}};

Note that the { and } brackets are doubled up in the conditional statement. This will prevent the “Not a Valid XSLT or XPath Function” error previously discussed here.

With this code in place, when a new Script for Service is entered or a draft Script for Service has it’s udf_rx_4_svc_start field modified, myEvolv will check to make sure that the start date is not not in the past and if it is, update the start date to today’s date. If the date is today’s date or a future date, it is left as it is.

Full Code Block

var start = new Date(getFormElement('udf_rx_4_svc_start'));
var today = new Date (todaysDate());
if(start <= today){{setFormElement('udf_rx_4_svc_start', todaysDate())}};

On Load Script

Just the Before Save Code alone would not be enough to prevent backdating. We still have the possibility of someone simply opening the draft and e-signing the form as in our scenario where the prescriber gets into myEvolv to e-sign scripts later than intended. Even if the form is edited in some way, if the Start Date is not touched, the Before Save code will execute but the column will not be flagged as modified and myEvolv will ignore it when updating the database. My approach here was to try to update the form as it loads upon viewing or editing so that myEvolv would see the column as modified when saving. I was unable to get the toolbar containing the ‘Save’ button to recongize the change, however, I was able to still get the desired effect another way.

The first thing to keep in mind with the On Load Script is that the form DOM has not loaded yet when this code runs. You can not therefore target the form field with JavaScript, update its value and focus/blur to make myEvolv notice a change to the value as we can with the On Click and On Change Scripts. Instead, you have to manipulate the Record XML Data before it gets loaded into the form.

The first step here is to determine whether the script had been signed. If it has been signed, it will have a non-null date_locked value. We check for this by using the myEvolv form function getDataValue() and then seeing if the form is being opened for viewing or editing.

var locked = getDataValue('event_log', 'event_log_id', keyValue, 'date_locked');
if(locked == '' && formXML.documentElement.getAttribute('formAction') == 'EDIT'){{
...
}}

This code gets the value of date_locked from the event_log table where the event_log_id is equal to keyValue which is a variable equal to the event log id of the current event you are looking at.

Then the code checks to see if there is a locked_date. If the locked date is blank AND the form is opened for editing, then it will execute the rest of the code. So basically, only perform a date manipulation if we are still working with a draft. If you leave this piece out then every time you look at a completed script for service in the future, myEvolv will overwrite the form field value for start date to be today’s date and you will be scratching your head.

Inside the ellipses we start the date manipulation. First we load the node for udf_rx_4_svc_start from the XML Record so that we can manipulate it.
node = formXML.documentElement.selectNodes("form_group/form_item [@column_name = 'udf_rx_4_svc_start']");
node = node[0];
This code returns an Array of all of the nodes in the XML documents with the column_name “udf_rx_svc_start”. There is only one but it is in an array so we load it into our variable directly on the next line.

Then we get the start date value and turn it into a JavaScript date object.
var start = new Date(node.text);

Then we do the same for today’s date.
var today = new Date(todaysDate());

Now we check to see if start date is before today’s date and if so, we will update the text of the node to be today’s date.

if(start < today){{
node.text = todaysDate();
node.setAttribute('modified', 'true');
...
}}

I also set the “modified” attribute to ‘true’ for this node. I don’t know if that makes a difference in this setup but I am including it since that is how my code is and it works.

If you leave the code as it is like this, when the form loads, if the start date is previous to today’s date, the value on the form will have been updated to today’s date AND the form field will be maroon like it is when a form field is changed. However, you will also notice that the “Save” button is nevertheless disabled and a user would be able to e-sign the service without being forced to hit save. And apparently, even though a “saving…” dialog pops up upon e-signing, the form is not saved. I tried a bunch of things to try to get the save button to enable and the e-sign button to disable but it is difficult since the form DOM is not loaded at the time that the On Load script runs. In the end, I decided to just call the save form function directly.

So where the ellipses above are, I put
SaveForm2();

The end result here is that when the form is opened for editing, if the start date is before today’s date, myEvolv will update the start date to be today’s date and then save. The users will see the form start to open and then abruptly close if the conditions are met. When they reopen it, they will find that today’s date has been updated to today’s date and they are free to e-sign.

Full Code Block

var locked = getDataValue('event_log', 'event_log_id', keyValue, 'date_locked');
if(locked == '' && formXML.documentElement.getAttribute('formAction') == 'EDIT'){{
node = formXML.documentElement.selectNodes("form_group/form_item [@column_name = 'udf_rx_4_svc_start']");
node = node[0];
var start = new Date(node.text);
var today = new Date(todaysDate());
if(start < today){{
node.text = todaysDate();
node.setAttribute('modified', 'true');
SaveForm2();
}}
}}

Bonus: After Save Code

Since the form is going to be auto-saving itself, I also added a snippet of code to the After Save Code that keeps the form from closing after save:
window.closeAfterSave = false;

Troubleshooting: JavaScript – Not a Valid XSLT or XPath Function

If you have run into the “… is not a valid XSLT or XPath function” error, then chances are that you are messing with the Before Save or After Save properties on a form.

myEvolv uses XML to define forms and XSLT to transform the XML into HTML when displaying the form in the browser. When you export a form from myEvolv, you are downloading an XML document that defines the properties for all of the fields on the form and the form itself that you configured in the form designer. You can then upload that same file to another instance if myEvolv and the system will know how to create that form, generating all of the same fields and properties.

When you go to open a form to enter data, XSLT is used to take the XML ‘recipe’ for the form and convert it into HTML to display in the browser. This presents an issue when you try to store JavaScript code in the Before Save and After Save properties for a form because XSLT has some overlap with special characters in JavaScript and so unless you escape those in your JavaScript code, you XSLT will try to evaluate the code as an XSLT command rather than treat it as JavaScript code to pass along into the HTML.

When I got the error shown below, I was working on a snippet of JavaScript code for the Before Save property that would evaluate whether the start date of the service was before today’s date and if so, update the start date to be today’s date so that no service could be backdated. Part of my code included an if/then statement to check if start date was earlier than today’s date.

not-valid-xslt-function-error

Following JavaScript syntax, I wrote my conditional
if(start< today){setFormElement('udf_rx_4_svc_start', todaysDate())};
which caused the above error.

Turns out the problem was the curly brackets { and } because XSLT attempts to evaluate statements inside curly brackets and the XSLT did not contain a todaysDate() function. Luckily, there is a way to escape curly brackets in XML so that XSLT does not try to evaluate them and that is by using double curly brackets. So changing my code to
if(start< today){{setFormElement('udf_rx_4_svc_start', todaysDate())}};
did the trick. Error is gone and the form works as expected Before Save.

How To: Override a Field Value at Save

Besides the ‘On Load’, ‘On Click’, and ‘On Change’ events that myEvolv allows you to use as triggers for user defined scripts, each form itself has ‘Before Save Code’ and ‘After Save Code’ properties that also can be used to trigger scripts.  These can be useful if you want to apply some business logic to your forms in a way that is safe from modification by clinicians.  Take for example, this simple scenario:

You have a funder that wants no-show services submitted with a duration of 0 minutes.

Beyond simply instructing your clinicians to enter a ‘0’ for duration when the “No Show” checkbox is checked and crossing your fingers, you might approach the problem using the ‘On Click Script’ property for the is_noshow field.  You can write a simple script that checks if the checkbox is checked and if it is, it will put “0” in the duration field.  However, the clinicians are still able to go ahead and change that duration value to something else or even clear it out before they save the form, essentially overriding your business logic.  What would be better is for you to override their logic.  That is where the ‘Before Save Code’ and ‘After Save Code’ properties become useful.

before-save-after-save

‘Before Save Code’ fires after saving?!?

One thing that might be confusing when using these properties on your forms is understanding when the code that is associated with each property is executed.  The confusion stems from the conflation of clicking the ‘Save’ button on the form and actually executing its save algorithm.  The ‘Before Save Code’ fires after the Save button is clicked on the form but before myEvolv runs through its routines that takes the form data from your browser and enters it into the database.  ‘After Save Code’ fires after the save algorithm.  The ‘Before Save Code’ is the key to a solution to our scenario because we want to override some data on the form before myEvolv reads it into the database.

The code

if(document.getElementById('is_noshow').checked) setFormElement('duration', '00:00')

Some notes about the code

JavaScript usually likes the function body to be wrapped in curly brackets { and } but using them in ‘Before Save Code’ and ‘After Save Code’ properties throws an error related to XPath and XSLT. Leaving the brackets off does not.

Also, the second argument in the setFormElement call needs to be formatted precisely for myEvolv. When using the Duration(hh:mm) field on the form itself, if you enter a plain ‘0’, once you click out of the field, the form would resolve the value to ’00:00′. When using the ‘Before Save Code’ property, the form will not have the chance to perform that transformation so the value must be formatted properly in the code itself.

How the code works

The first part of the code is a simple if-statement to check if the is_noshow checkbox is checked. If it is, then a call is made to a Netsmart created setFormElement function that changes the duration field’s value to ’00:00′. The setFormElement function takes only two arguments: the name of the element and a value to set and can be used on any field on the form.

form-before-after

When the clinician opens the form, there will be no difference in the way that the form behaves and the clinician will be able to enter any duration he or she would like in the ‘Duration (hh:mm)’ field. Once the clinician hits the ‘Save’ button, the code will execute. If the clinician checked the “Session Not Provided” checkbox on the form (this is the label used on the is_noshow field in my example), then the value of ‘Duration (hh:mm)’ will be changed to ’00:00′ just before myEvolv runs its save routines. The clinician still will not see any difference until after the event is entered into the system. Re-opening the saved form will show that the ‘Duration (hh:mm)’ has been changed to ’00:00′ despite whatever duration had been entered by the clinician.

How To: Enable/Disable a Field Based on the Selected Value in a Picklist Field

Disable rules in myEvolv are one of the best methods we have available for controlling what data is collected during service entry.  There are a lot of forms in myEvolv that use checkboxes to enable and disable form fields but it is also possible to enable and disable form fields based on other criteria.

One of my programs needed some more logic built into how they were documenting the setting in which services were being provided.  They had been using a simple foreign key data field connected to a user defined lookup table to select a generic location.  They wanted to capture more specific locations in some cases without making drastic changes to the form.  My approach was to add two new fields to the form that would only be modifiable if certain options were selected in the generic location field.

Here is how the location section of the form looked after adding the new fields.

picklist-default-empty

The “Location of Service” field is the generic location field that was already on the form.  “Non-FRC Location” is a foreign key field that links to a new user-defined lookup table that contains the more specific locations when “Non-FRC Preschool/UPK”, “Non-FRC School” or “Daycare” is selected in “Location of Service”.  “Community Location” is a custom string field where the clinician can type a more specific location when “Community location” is selected in “Location of Service”.  Both of the new fields are required so that when they become enabled, the clinician cannot forget to add the information that the program wants.

The code

The community location piece is simpler so we will look at that first.  To get the “Community Location” field to enable only when “Community location” is selected in the “Location of Service” field, I used the following code in the “Community Location” fields disable rule property:

document.getElementById('serv_loca').value != '36A0BC74-E4FE-43AA-BF0F-BB429D6C28D1'

How the code works

The disable rule in myEvolv works like an if-statement where you get to determine the conditions.  Whatever you put into the disable rule property will be evaluated and if the result is true, the field will be disabled and if the result is false, the field will be enabled.  The statement above will evaluate true (disable the field) if the value of the ‘serv_loca’ field is not equal to ‘Community location’.

picklist-community-enabled

A note on the GUIDs

When you get the value of a foreign key field, the value is a foreign key and not the description or the code. That is why in the code, ‘Community location’ is actually ’36A0BC74-E4FE-43AA-BF0F-BB429D6C28D1′. You can check out my post on how to default a value on a picklist field for a method on how to find the foreign key value for items in your user defined lookup tables.

Adding complexity to the conditions

To get the “Non-FRC Location” field to enable only when one of three options is selected, the code needs to get a little more complex:

document.getElementById('serv_loca').value != '569B4372-5F51-492E-87EB-D1927EE714D4'
&amp;&amp; document.getElementById('serv_loca').value != 'E5AA86E2-C558-4423-9CE6-4D29B5489B76'
&amp;&amp; document.getElementById('serv_loca').value != '922BCDC4-DC91-4AC3-9949-3401AF509AE1'

How the more complex code works

Here, I am using the JavaScript logical operator && to say this statement should evaluate to true (that is, the field should be disabled) if the value of ‘serv_loca’ is not equal to ‘Day Care’ and not equal to ‘Non-FRC Preschool/UPK’ and not equal to ‘Non-FRC School’.  Based on how logical operators work, if a single one of those conditions is true, the entire statement evaluates as false and the field will be enabled.  You can also use the JavaScript “or” logical operator || to craft the conditional statement you need.

picklist-location-enabled

A note on ampersands

Another thing you might be wondering about is why I used &amp;&amp; instead of JavaScript’s “and” logical operator &&. I explain this in a troubleshooting post that you can read here.

Troubleshooting: XML – A name was started with an invalid character

I was working on designing a form for a program and when I went to launch the form to test the changes that I had made, I received an XML error:

There was an error in the form XML file:  CONTACT_ther_ser_nodx.xml.

Error reason: A name was started with an invalid character.

Error line/position in file: 824 / 108

Source text: disable_rule_code=”(document.getElementById(‘serv_loca’).value != ‘569B4372-5F51-492E-87EB-D1927EE714D4’ && document.getElementById(‘serv_loca’).value != ‘E5AA86E2-C558-4423-9CE6-4D29B5489B76’ && document.getElementById(‘serv_loca’).value != ‘922BCDC4-DC91=4AC3-9949-3401AF509AE1’)”

 

xml-error-invalid-character

 

According to the error message, myEvolv was taking issue with some JavaScript that I was attempting to use to disable/enable a field based on the selected value of a picklist field.  Apparently I had an invalid character.  After scanning through my code looking for an error in my JavaScript and not finding any, I took a closer look at the error and noticed that it was actually a problem in the form XML that was throwing the error but ti was somehow related to the JavaScript code I had written.

It turns out that the problem relates to the XML standard and special characters.  In JavaScript, a double ampersand, &&, is used for the logical operator “and”.  In XML, the ampersand is a special character and myEvolv stores form data in XML so when my disable rule JavaScript was being parsed within the XML form document without the ampersands escaped, it caused an invalid character XML error.

To fix this, I just had to switch the && in my JavaScript to &amp;&amp; and the form rendered fine and the JavaScript still worked.

*ARCHIVE* How To: Default a Date Field Value Based on Another Date Field

NOTE: THIS POST CONTAINS OBSOLETE CODE THAT WILL NOT WORK IN NX. I WILL KEEP THE POST AVAILABLE SINCE IT MAY PROVIDE SOME INSIGHT IN HOW TO USE JAVASCRIPT TO MANIPULATE MYEVOLV FORMS. YOU CAN FIND THE UPDATED VERSION OF THIS POST HERE.

When working on treatment plans in myEvolv, you will notice that many of the treatment plan component forms contain both a start date and a target completion date.  One of the programs I was building a treatment plan for wanted to have the target completion date on the form but always wanted it to be 90 days from the start date.  Instead of making each clinician calculate 90 days from the start date and fill it in themselves, I used this method to take the date value from the start date and update the target completion date field with a value that is 90 days later.  I will walk you through the JavaScript that I used so that you can make adjustments based on your needs.  The full snippet of JavaScript will be at the end.

two-fields

Where does the code go?

The first consideration is where to put the JavaScript.  In this case, used the ‘On Change Script’ field property on the field that will be modified by the clinician, ‘start_date’.  myEvolv provides us with access to 3 events that we can use to trigger our JavaScript handlers (the code we want to execute):  ‘On Change’, ‘On Click’ and ‘On Load’.  The ‘On Change’ event is fired when the value of the field has been changed.  This is the most suitable event to use in this situation since I do not want the new date value to calculate until there is a value in the first date field.  Furthermore, if a clinician makes a mistake entering the start date, I want the new date to recalculate when the clinician makes an adjustment.  Both of these scenarios are covered when using the ‘On Change’ event.

Get the ‘start_date’

The first line of JavaScript code’s purpose is to get the value that has been placed into the ‘start_date’ field and convert it into a proper JavaScript Date object so that we can manipulate the date easily. I decalred a variable named date and set it to be a new Date object passing the value of the ‘start_date’ field as its argument:

var date = new Date(document.getElementById('start_date').value);

Calculate a New Date

Now with the date entered by the clinician converted to a Date object, I can perform some calculations on the date using the ‘getter’ and ‘setter’ methods built in to JavaScript Date objects. In my scenario, I need the ‘target_date’ field to be +90 days from the ‘start_date’ so I used the getDate() and setDate() methods:

date.setDate(date.getDate() + 90);

If I wanted to do +3 months instead, I would use the getMonth() and setMonth() methods:

date.setMonth(date.getMonth() + 3);

If I wanted to do +1 year, I would use the getFullYear() and setFullYear() methods:

date.setFullYear(date.getFullYear() + 1);

There are also methods for getting and setting hours, minutes, seconds, and milliseconds, but I am dealing with Date Only fields in this scenario.

Format the New Date

Now that the date object has my new date stored in it, I need to put that value into the ‘target_date’ field. However, the date in the date object is not formatted in a way that myEvolv’s date fields like so I need to pull the individual date elements from the object and build a string value to place in the date field. I accomplish this first by declaring variables for the month, day and year:

var mm = date.getMonth() + 1;//+1 is needed because in JavaScript Date objects, January is 0
var dd = date.getDate();
var yyyy = date.getFullYear();

Now I declare a new variable called formatted_date and set its value to a concatenated myEvolv-friendly string:

var formatted_date = mm + '/' + dd + '/' + yyyy;

Set the ‘target_date’

Next I can put this string into the field on the form. Since I will do a few things to the ‘target_date’ field, I am going to create a variable called target_date to refer to it more quickly:

var target_date = document.getElementById('target_date');
target_date.value = formatted_date;

Awaken the ‘target_date’ Field

You might think that you are done here because the new date has been loaded into the form, however, because I used JavaScript to update the value of ‘target_date’, the form itself does not recognize that a change has been made to ‘target_date’ which is indicated by the form label and field value text turning red. Even though the value is in the form field, upon saving, the form will not recognize the field as having a new value and will not include it in its save operation. One way to fix that is to manually click in the ‘target_date’ field and then click out of it so that the form recognizes a change in the value of the field but that is un-intuitive and error-prone. Luckily, JavaScript provides a method for simulating this with the focus() and blur() methods to use on form fields:

target_date.focus();
target_date.blur();

With these two lines at the end, after the new date value has been filled in on the ‘target_date’ field, the field label turns red which means that the form has recognized that its value has changed and it will include the change when the form is saved.

two-fields-filled

One Caveat

You may be inclined to disable the ‘target_date’ form field so that clinicians cannot change the value after it has been calculated. I was unable to get that to work, however. When a form field is disabled, it is excluded from being saved so for now it would seem that you have to keep the form field modifiable. If you used this same similar* code in the ‘On Change Script’ property for ‘target_date’, you could prevent the ‘target_date’ from being changed by effectively reverting any attempts at changing the ‘target_date’ manually.

*You will need to also add some JavaScript to validate that the ‘target_date’ has been changed because if you just put this exact same code in the ‘On Change Script’ property for ‘target_date’, you will end up in an infinite loop when ‘actual_date’ is changed on the form and you will crash the browser.

The Full Code

var date = new Date(document.getElementById('start_date').value);
date.setDate(date.getDate() + 90);
var mm = date.getMonth() + 1;
var dd = date.getDate();
var yyyy = date.getFullYear();
var formatted_date = mm + '/' + dd + '/' +yyyy;
var target_date = document.getElementById('target_date');
target_date.value = formatted_date;
target_date.focus();
target_date.blur();

*ARCHIVE* How To: Default Value in Picklist Field

NOTE: An updated version of this post for myEvolv NX is available here: How To: Default Value for Picklist Field

You may find that a myEvolv form that you wish to use contains a picklist field that cannot be done away with even though the user is always going to be selecting the same item.  For instance, you may have a treatment plan for a program where there is only one category of goals but you have to select that category manually anyways.  Just like other fields in myEvolv, you have the option of setting a default value for a picklist field but it is a little trickier to setup than it is for text and date fields.  Defaulting values for picklist fields where there are no real choices to be made will save your clinicians time when doing their work in myEvolv.

Some picklist fields have both a button that opens the picklist dialog and a place to type a code, which allows for faster entry for users who know the codes.

category-empty

You might think that you can designate a default value in the form designer in the same way that you designate a default value in a text field since there is a sort of text field available.  If you try that, however, you will find that this does not work.  The difference is that this field is actually used to store a foreign key value and so the default value must be a foreign key (the GUID) and not the description or code values for the item that you wish to default in.  Remember to place it within single quotes as you would a default text value.

default-value-filled

In my example, I needed the GUID for a custom treatment category named “Day Treatment”.  Looking at the field properties for this picklist field, I see that the Lookup table that is being used is ‘Problem Category Lookup – Not Safety Plan’, which tells me that I need to take a look at the ‘problem category’ table.

picklist-field-properties

I pulled that table into Crystal Reports and made a quick and dirty report that shows the problem_category_id and the description and grabbed the GUID that corresponds with my Day Treatment category.

guid-crystal-reports

With the GUID used as the default value on the picklist field, now ‘Day Treatment’ is the default value on the treatment plan whenever a new Category component is added to the treatment plan.

category-filled

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