Class of Digits

Jesse Calagna

So we have new students entered with class of 2033 and we have a crystal report that reports on parent participation relative to their kids status. It's not pulling in those entered as 2033 only those entered as 33. I am nervous to enter all 2 digits because then we will not know who is 1933 and who is 2033 as we have both in our RE. Any ideas on how best to deal with this going forward?

Karen Diener

Are you 100% sure that all of the class of 2033 was entered with a four digit year? I worked in a school before that didn't like seeing four digit years, so the database was set to only display the two digit year. (You can change the setting in Configuration | Business Rules | Alumni Options.)


The school was over 100 years old when I was there, so there were alumni from the class of 1910 as well as the class of 2010. And there were definitely occasions where someone added only the two digits and RE adjusted the date incorrectly.


If you have DOB on the record, you can run a query of the class of 2033 with age as an output field. If someone shows up who is much older than a 2033 grad would be, it is a red flag. Then also run a query of people in the class of 1933 to see what you find.


Even if you only display two digit years in your database, you have to enter all four digits. That's the only way make sure you aren't off by 100 years. :-)


Karen

Carlene Johnson

I've run into problems in the past with RE and 2 vs. 4 year digits and it turns out it was a Windows issue. For those students who has a Class of with dates of 29, 30, 31, 32 or higher it would not export a year at all - regardless of whether or not I changed the settings in RE to use 4 digit instead of 2.


The solution was actually related to how Windows was interpreting 2 digit years. We had to update the ranges on how to interpret 2 digit years to be in the 2000's not the 1900's. I set the new range to be 1941 - 2041.


Here are the instructions for Windows 10 that some folks might find helpful. (This may not solve your problem - but it is worth looking into!)

In Microsoft Windows, you can change the way two-digit years are interpreted for all Windows programs that you have installed.

Windows 10

1. In the search box on the taskbar, type control panel, and then select Control Panel.

2. Under Clock, Language and Region, click Change date, time, or number formats

3. Click Regional and Language Options.

4. In the Region dialog box, click Additional settings.

5. Click the Date tab.

6. In the When a two-digit year is entered, interpret it as a year between box, change the upper limit for the century.

   As you change the upper-limit year, the lower-limit year automatically changes.

7. Click OK.

Jesse Calagna

We mostly encounter this problem when we run participation reports