[✅ Solution] Calculate Due Date Accounting for Weekdays Only

[joelhall]

I believe the answer probably lies somewhere within a script but I would like to create a checklist item in an automation, and set the due date to be X days out but have those X days be weekdays only. Looks like I should be able to do this from the calc option within the automation action?

[Tim]

Hi @joelhall,

also from my side a warm welcome to the Tape community

Thanks for sharing your use case. This sounds like a great real world case.

As Tape uses standard JavaScript, a great option to generate such code is ChatGPT. I used this prompt:

Write a javascript function that adds n days to the current day, but if the result is a weekend moves forward to the next weekday.

The result looks as follows (just tweaked it a little to match the Tape variable later):

function addBusinessDays(n) {
  const currentDate = new Date();
  let dayCount = 0;

  while (dayCount < n) {
    currentDate.setDate(currentDate.getDate() + 1);

    // Check if the current day is a weekend (Saturday or Sunday)
    if (currentDate.getDay() === 0 || currentDate.getDay() === 6) {
      continue; // Skip weekends
    }

    dayCount++;
  }

  return currentDate;
}

// Example usage:
const n = 5; // Add 5 business days; n=1 would be the next business day after today.
const new_date = addBusinessDays(n);
console.log(new_date);
var_next_due_date = new_date

After putting this in an “Execute Script” action, you can use the variable to add your checklist entry:

It should then generate the desired result:

I hope that works for you. Let me know how it goes!

Happy scripting & Cheers
Tim

[joelhall]

@Tim yes! That worked perfect. I had something very close in GPT (my prompt creation needs some work ). I was trying to place the script in the due date calculation field itself rather than using the “Execute Script” to create a variable action. Now it makes sense as this is like setting a variable action in Podio Workflow Automation and then using that variable later on. Thank you for the guidance.