Dynamic Subtraction

[akumar2609]

Hi All,

I have a workflow which always populates the data into a new tab (with date and time mentioned on it) when ever we run it. My requirement is to get the difference between the 'current run' data and the last run data. 

For example - if I ran the data (let's call it as A) now and the last time workflow was run 2 hours ago( let's call it as B), the result, I need is B-A in subtract column. 

This work totally fine, until we move to a new month end cycle, as in the new month, there will  be no previous data available. Before rolling forward for the next month, we delete all the tabs from the previous cycle. 

Is there any way that when I run the data for the first time in the new month end cycle, it should give me the result as it is the data available for the first day?  

[rzdodson]

@akumar2609I may be able to help you here. Are you saving unique instances of the file, or saving over the original output from the workflow once the workflow completes its run? It'll influence the tools likely used in a solution for you. 

[akumar2609]

My Output file will remain same. The only change which will happen here is creating a new tab for the output with date and time as the tab name, all the time when we run the workflow. 

[rzdodson]

@akumar2609 this should be able to help you out. Basically what I am doing here is grabbing the file you are overwriting and retrieving its LastWriteTime field using a directory tool. Once gathered, it'll be appended to the data set from the rest of your workflow. Then, I create some helper variables to calculate the difference in minutes and days between the runs, create a dynamic output path string to save the output where the workflow is saved, before outputting.

Since it sounds like you know the exact file you are looking for, I would include that as an additional filter condition in the Filter tool in the second layer.

Edit: since it sounds like you already know the file name you are saving over, you can also delete the Select through RecordID tools in between the Directory and Filter tool in the second layer as well.