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Date Types, Styles, and Fuzzy Dates
Date Types, Styles, and Fuzzy Dates

Set your date style preference, use fuzzy dates, and review the date types available for precise organization of facts.

Meg Hall avatar
Written by Meg Hall
Updated over 3 months ago

Date Style Preferences

Casefleet recognizes American, European, and International date styles. Administrators can set the date style for your account by visiting Account Settings > Overview and selecting an option from the "date style" field. Once your preferred date style is selected, it will be visible to all users in the account. 

Date Types and Fuzzy Dates

When creating facts, you might not always have all of the information you need about when a fact occurred. Date types help you discern which of your facts have dates you know vs. dates you don't.

When you add a date, you can decide whether to limit the date to a year, a month and a year, or a month, day, and year. For increased specificity, you can also specify the hour, minute, and second on which an event occurred.

The following examples are all valid ways of entering a date for a fact:

  • 12/3/2015 - The fact occurred on December 3, 2015.

  • 3/2012 - The fact occurred sometime in March of 2012.

  • 2011 - The fact occurred sometime in 2011.

The following examples are all valid ways of entering a specific time:

  • 2:37pm - The hour and minute the fact occurred.

  • 2:37:14pm - The hour, minute, and second a fact occurred.

There are also 7 date types to choose from, allowing you to create fuzzy dates, date ranges, a specific order of dates, etc.:

  1. On: This is the default date selector. When you know a fact has occurred on a particular date, use this date type. 

  2. Ordered: Sometimes facts are organized vaguely in the order in which they occurred. When this happens, select "Ordered" and the best approximate date. This will add an "Order" field that can be used to arrange facts relative to one another. 

  3. Around: Used to signify and approximate the date of the fact. 

  4. After: Another approximation, this one to show the fact occurred sometime after a specific date. 

  5. Before: Used to approximate the date and time for a fact to show the fact occurred sometime before a date. 

  6. From To: Sometimes a fact represents a range of dates. For example, a fact might occur starting on January 1, 2018, and ending on March 31, 2018. You can use "From To" to represent this range of dates. 

  7. Between: Used to approximate a date using two other dates as landmarks for the fact.

Your facts will order themselves based on the type of date selected and the date (and time) selected for the type. Here's an example of how different dates look in Casefleet:

Time Zones for Facts

By default, each case in your account is set to your local time zone. However, you can adjust the default time zone for any case file by clicking the pencil icon next to the Case Name at the top of the page.

If you have time-sensitive facts that occur in different geographic locations or time zones within the same case, you can also change the time zone for any particular fact in your chronology:

Automatic Date Detection

When highlighting text to create facts, Casefleet automatically attempts to recognize and use a date included within the selected text for the new fact record.

To minimize errors, the date must include a year between 1900 and 2030 to be detected. Detectable dates can be formatted as a standalone year; a month and year only (no day); or a specific day, month, and year.

NOTE: Times referenced in the source text are not automatically recognized.

When a detected date has been auto-applied to your new fact, you will see a small checkmark icon in the Create New Fact sidebar, indicating that automatic date recognition has been applied.

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