Dynamic rename a field conditional on today's date

Question

Hi Alteryx community,

I've been wrestling with this one, but I have a workflow I'm putting together where a field name changes every month based on the following parameters:

I am using 2024 as the current year and 2023 as the prior year in this example, but this attribute is dynamic as well.

If today's month is...Then the field name should be...January of the current yearSum of Jan - Dec 2023 [prior year] FlowsFebruary of the current yearSum of Jan 2024 [current year] FlowsMarch of the current yearSum of Jan - Feb 2024 FlowsApril of the current yearSum of Jan - Mar 2024 FlowsMay of the current yearSum of Jan - Apr 2024 FlowsJune of the current yearSum of Jan - May 2024 FlowsJuly of the current yearSum of Jan - Jun 2024 FlowsAugust of the current yearSum of Jan - Jul 2024 FlowsSeptember of the current yearSum of Jan - Aug 2024 FlowsOctober of the current yearSum of Jan - Sep 2024 FlowsNovember of the current yearSum of Jan - Oct 2024 FlowsDecember of the current yearSum of Jan - Nov 2024 Flows

I tend to wrestle with datetime conditional formulas and I've attempted many variations but they either return a malformed if statement or error that the formula can't convert the date. Any ideas you guys have would be so appreciated. Thank you!

Dynamic_Rename_with_conditional_date.yxmd

Anna92 · Accepted Answer

Praise the freaking Lord, I figured it out. Gonna post solution in case anyone else runs into this issue.

I don't know why this works, but it works so if someone wants to comment about the data types that impacts this conditional formula, please let me know. Thank you!

If DateTimeFormat(DateTimeToday(),"%b") = "Jan" then

"Sum of Jan - Dec " + DateTimeFormat(DateTimeAdd(DateTimeToday(),-1,"year"),"%Y") + " Flows"

elseif DateTimeFormat(DateTimeToday(),"%b") = "Feb" then

"Sum of Jan " + DateTimeFormat(DateTimeToday(),"%Y") + " Flows"

elseif DateTimeFormat(DateTimeToday(),"%b") = "Mar" then

"Sum of Jan - Feb " + DateTimeFormat(DateTimeToday(),"%Y") + " Flows"

elseif DateTimeFormat(DateTimeToday(),"%b") = "Apr" then

"Sum of Jan - Mar " + DateTimeFormat(DateTimeToday(),"%Y") + " Flows"

else [_CurrentField_] endif