Allow AM/PM to be added to DateTime Tool

[kevinbird15]

In the DateTime tool, you should be able to specify AM PM.  Some other programs I use would do this with an 'a' at the end.  Here is an example of what I think it should be

MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm a

Input Date	Output Date
09/10/2017 11:36 AM	2017-09-10 11:36:00
09/10/2017 11:36 PM	2017-09-10 23:36:00

Maybe I am missing something and this is already doable, but so far I haven't found a clean way to do it. 

[KaneG]

Hi @kevinbird15,

%p or %P are the specifiers for that. So, to convert what you have above the following should work (%I should allow the hours to have 1 digit or 2):

%m/%d/%Y %I:mm %p

[DataMeister]

Solvers:

Here we are in 2020 still looking up answers to the AM PM problem, because since 2017 or before, developers at Alteryx haven't focused on reducing the code which hapless users need to type. No, "%p or %P" aren't good enough. Why are we typing a wildcard, when the app should recognize dates, times, and any combination of the two? We learn to read clocks & calendars in kindergarten or 1st grade, so it's not too much to ask that as grownups our apps should take over the drudgery.

By the way, ISO date format is fine but don't make us look at it, then have to remember that Alteryx changes our incoming NON-ISO DATES to strings (because it refuses to recognize them as dates, see) and then have to engage tools & settings to craft the #$%& (no that's not a formula) dates we need to see at the end--wait, I know; how about programming a low-code, no-code software environment where knowledge workers can be free from having to be programmers? Oh yeah: that's what Alteryx is supposed to be, and that's my rant!

[KylieF]

Hi @DataMeister,

Thank you for your feedback and I'm sorry to hear about your frustration with how the current DateTime tool functionality works. Due to this idea being updated as implemented back in 2017, this feature hasn't been brought to the Product team through Community channels. However, as we have changed how we address and push ideas to our Product teams in the last year so if you'd like to submit a new idea for this functionality we can insure it goes through the new progression of ideas on the Community.

Thank you again for your feedback!