How To identify a date which is x business days from a particular date

Problem Description : Salesforce customers/users find it hard to count business days between today and a particular date as there is no function/method which lets you know the number of business days between two dates. So, if a user wants to get notified when there are exactly x business days left before a particular date, there is no straightforward way of achieving it.

Challenges to User/Developer : Suggested workaround is to create a formula field that holds a date which is exactly x business days away from a particular date.



Solution :

Approach : Use WEEKDAY() function to get values 1,7,2 depending on the date added inside the function

Technical Solution :

Create a custom field to hold the date which is x business days from a particular date.

WEEKDAY(date field) returns the day of the week for the given date, using 1 for Sunday, 2 for Monday, through 7 for Saturday. Below is the formula.

CASE(WEEKDAY(Agreed_Due_Date__c),1, Agreed_Due_Date__c – 6,7,Agreed_Due_Date__c – 5,Agreed_Due_Date__c – 7)
In the above example x is 5.This formula field counts 5 business days before a date field “Agrees_Due_Date”.

Advantage : Easy to migrate, Not hard to implement, Scalable when business days have to be calculated for few date fields.

Issues : None.

Conclusion : This Custom formula field can now be used to notify when there is exactly x business days from the required date field.

salesforce date field calendar popup,salesforce date literals,salesforce dates in formulas,salesforce date days between,