Dynamics Community Forum Thread Details

Best way to prevent a future date on a custom field - Real-time workflow not working

Requirement:

I need to stop users from entering a future date in a "Date and Time of Data Breach" field. If the selected date is later than today, it should be blocked with an error message. Past and current dates should be allowed. This has to be achieved using OOTB. No-code features , JavaScript or plugins.

Field details: custom entity (Data Breach), field il_dateandtimeofdatabreach, behaviour = User Local, format = Date and Time. The Data Breach entity is related to Case, and the field is entered via the Case form (Data Breach tab). Environment: D365 Customer Service, model-driven.

What I tried (and didn't work):

I built a real-time workflow on the Data Breach entity (scope Organization, trigger on Record Created):

Condition: If Date and Time of Data Breach > [anchor], then Stop Workflow → Canceled with a custom error.

I tried three different anchors for "today":

The Data Breach record's own Created On

The related Case's Created On

Process-Execution Time

In every case, when I create a record with a clearly future date (e.g. today 19 June, breach date 24 June), the workflow job shows Succeeded — it never reaches the Cancel step and the record saves with no error. Logically Process-Execution Time = now, so the condition should be TRUE, but it Succeeds every time.

Other OOTB options I'm aware of

Formula column with Now() (since calculated columns are deprecated) + a business rule to show the error.

Given the no-code constraint, is the workflow approach viable at all for this? Or is a formula column + business rule the right OOTB route? And is there a reason a real-time Create workflow would consistently fail to read the field value for this comparison?

Categories:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM

1. Create a Formula column (Date/Time)
Expression : Now() or UtcNow() if you want consistency regardless of user local format

2) Create business rule or DataBreach
Condition
il_dateandtimeofdatabreach > [Your Now() formula column]
Action:
-> Show error message
-> Set field as invalid (or clear it)
This works client-side and server-side (if scoped properly) and would be no code approach as per your requirement.

Real-time workflows are unreliable here because they don’t consistently evaluate User Local DateTime fields during the create stage due to timezone conversions and execution timing, so the “current time” comparison never evaluates as expected.

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