How to Leverage the Current Date/Time Feature

Mammoth’s latest update introduces the Current Date-Time functionality, designed to efficiently work with date columns.

This new feature is a game-changer for anyone who regularly deals with time-series data. It enhances precision in filtering date columns, streamlines your workflow by allowing a one-time set up for current-time based filters, eliminating the need for repetitive adjustments, simplifies the computation of date differences, and improves the ease of inserting current date/time in date columns.

Here are all the features that have been enhanced with the current date & time functionality:

Apply filter

You will now be able to filter data where the date matches the current date & time, down to the second.

current date time

Fig. 220 Filtering a date column matching the current date

To apply the filter:

  1. Go to the ‘Apply filter’ function

  2. Select a date column

  3. Select the operand as ‘Current date/time’

  4. Specify the granularity, and

  5. Click apply.

You can also build complex filters using the current date & time operand. For instance, filtering data from the past 6 hours could be achieved with the following condition:

current date and time conditions

Fig. 221 Building complex conditions with the current date & time feature

Date difference function

You can calculate the date difference from the current date-time or vice versa.

current date in date diff

Fig. 222 Current date-time function in the date difference rule

To calculate the date/time difference from the current date-time,

  1. Go to the ‘Date difference’ function

  2. Select a start date

  3. Set the end date as ‘Current date-time’

  4. Caculate difference in years, months, days, hours, and so on

  5. Save results in a new or existing column

  6. Click apply.

Label & Insert function

You can also insert the current date-time in any date column (or in a new date-type column) for further analysis on your data with the Label & Insert rule.

current date time in label

Fig. 223 Inserting the current date as a value with the label & insert function

To enter the current date or time in any new or existing columns,

  1. Go to the ‘Label & Insert’ function

  2. Select any existing date columns or create a new column with the date datatype

  3. Choose Current date (UTC) or Current time (UTC) as the new value

  4. Click apply.

The result column will have the current date-time as the value as shown below:

current date label result

Fig. 224 Current date inserted in a new column

Besides, the current date-time feature is also present in the conditions module for date columns.