Soft Periods

The term "soft periods" refers to year/period values which are entered as offsets from the current year and period rather than as explicit values. This is done using the format +nn or -nn. For example, +02 in the year part of the field indicates the year after next; -01 in the period part of the field indicates the previous period. You can omit the leading zero from the offsets, so +2 means the same as +02.

The current period is the period that today's date falls into. If today's date is March 17 2015 and the period structure used by your company starts on January 1 and has 12 periods falling on calendar month boundaries, the current period will be 003. If your organization (org) has multiple companies using different period structures, today's date may fall into a different period for each company.

To represent the current year or period in a soft date, use +0 or -0. For example, -0/-0 or +0/+0 both mean current year and period.

You can use soft periods when setting up and running action views. For example, by setting up a selection rule that uses soft periods to retrieve transactions posted in the previous month, you can use the same action view template each month and the soft period will always resolve correctly. This means that you need to set up fewer action view templates and that your results are consistent.

Soft periods can only be entered for the Period__c.Period ID field in action views. You must ensure that the Period__c.Period ID field is included in your dataview and both the Selectable and Presentable checkboxes are enabled for it. If you are likely to want to filter the results at runtime using soft periods, ensure that you add the field to your action view template. You will then be able to enter soft periods for criteria when:

  • Creating join filters on the dataview.
  • Creating selection rules, column filters and reverse sign rules on the action view template.
  • Completing prompts at runtime, and when filtering the results or retrieving new results.
Note:

If you enter a soft period that resolves to a year or period which does not exist in your company, no results will be found.

Let's assume that the current year/period is 2015/008 and there are 12 periods in every year. If the soft period is -01/-03 Reporting resolves the year value by counting back one year from the current year, and resolves the period value by counting back three periods from the current period. Therefore, the result is 2014/005.

Using the same assumption, the table below illustrates how other soft periods are resolved:

Soft Period Resolution
Soft Period Result Explanation
-1/-0 2014/008 Previous year, current period
-1/+4 2014/012 Previous year, 4 periods later
+1/+0 2016/008 Next year, current period
+0/+6 2016/002 Next year, period 2. This crosses a future year boundary.
-0/-10 2014/010 Current year, 10 periods earlier. This crosses a previous year boundary.
2015/+2 2015/10 Year 2015, 2 periods later. Here the year is entered as an explicit value.
+0/012 2015/012 Current year, period 12. Here the period is entered as an explicit value.
Note:

Special periods (000, 100, 101) are skipped when soft dates are resolved. However you can enter a special period as an explicit value in the soft period, for example -1/101 will resolve as period 101 of the previous year.