Delete rows from a table triggered by date

[Clau-d12b]

Hi All,
i have a table where Users make a Checkin into a location every day. A records looks like:

Peter | Berlin | 10/06/2020
Mary | Hamburg | 10/06/2020

Because people forget their Checkout, I would like to delete those records lets at 10pm, so they can register again the next day.

How can I do this?
cheers Claus

[Matt_N]

Hi @Clau-d12b

Great question, thanks for your post!

Automations can help you accomplish what you are looking to do. More specifically, you can create a table automation that deletes the row of data when a certain date and time has been reached. Here is an article that reviews using automations and setting a trigger.

Using the example records you provided, you would want to set something like this to remove the two records at 10pm:

Screenshot of the example table I created to replicate:

One thing to note in my example table above is that my Date column has it’s format set to ‘Date’ to ensure users input proper dates and that our table reads it as a date.

1.) Select ‘Date & Time Reached’ as your automation trigger
2.) Select the table that you want the automation to run for
3.) Specify that it should start 20 hours ‘after row date’ for the column containing the date information.

All times in Honeycode are set to UTC, therefore if you want to delete these rows at 10pm local time for Berlin/Hamburg then you will want to trigger the automation at 10/6/20 at 20:00 UTC which equals to 10/6/20 22:00 in Berlin and Hamburg.

If your case involves more times zones, I may suggest that you create a flow in your app that doesn’t allow users check into another location until they input a checkout date for the last location in the app. This can help reduce complexities for you with time zones and allow you to get fuller data of both check in and check out for all users/locations.

The idea here would be to use conditional visibility and data validation to achieve this type of app experience for users.

Let me know if you have any further questions. I’m happy to help!

Thanks,
Matt