{"id":157724,"date":"2020-08-28T14:38:44","date_gmt":"2020-08-28T18:38:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/live-cati-marketing.pantheonsite.io\/blog\/formatting-text-with-driveworks\/"},"modified":"2022-04-20T19:12:50","modified_gmt":"2022-04-20T23:12:50","slug":"formatting-text-with-driveworks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/?p=157724","title":{"rendered":"Formatting Text with DriveWorks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Pop quiz: Jenny just gave you her phone number, which way is easier to read? (555) 867-5309 or 5558675309? If you want any way of remembering this, you probably said the first option (<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=6WTdTwcmxyo\">or just remembered the song<\/a><\/strong>). So how does this work with <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.inflow-tech.com\/solutions\/driveworks-design-automation\/\">DriveWorks<\/a><\/strong>? You probably don\u2019t need an easy way of remembering numbers, but ERP systems need properly formatted data. I&#8217;ve written before about how <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.inflow-tech.com\/blog\/2019\/11\/integrate-driveworks-with-other-business-systems\/\">DriveWorks can integrate with other systems<\/a><\/strong>. So today, let\u2019s talk about formatting text with DriveWorks to get any result you want.<\/p>\n<h2>Why Formatting Matters<\/h2>\n<p>Some people don\u2019t care about the formatting of their text. That\u2019s not a big deal. However, I mentioned earlier that your systems might care. Or, what if you have customers entering data and you want to make it easier for them?<\/p>\n<p>This data lives in different formats. Email addresses need to have a <a href=\"https:\/\/techterms.com\/definition\/email_address\"><strong>username and a domain<\/strong><\/a>. Without either of those things, you don\u2019t have a valid email address. It might make sense to have someone enter an email address and validate it with DriveWorks rules.<\/p>\n<p>Numeric values are another subset of formats. If someone gave me 10000000, it would take a second to know what I\u2019m looking at. Compare that to 10,000,000 and it\u2019s easy to see the difference. So, with the groundwork set, let\u2019s see how DriveWorks can help us.<\/p>\n<h2>Validate Formatting<\/h2>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-52903\" src=\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/solidworks-1597782440646.png\" alt=\"Not only can we format text with DriveWorks, but we can also validate text, ensuring our data is accurate.\" width=\"616\" height=\"283\" data-wpmflightbox=\"0\" data-wpmf_image_lightbox=\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/solidworks-1597782440646.png\" \/><\/p>\n<p>DriveWorks has some pretty sweet validation rules. If you haven\u2019t checked out the <a href=\"https:\/\/techstack.driveworkslive.com\/Apps\/TechStack-Rules\/\"><strong>DriveWorks Tech Stack<\/strong><\/a>, they have a nice section about validation rules. Validation rules ensure your formatted text is what you want it to be. Here\u2019s just a sneak peak of what you will see.<\/p>\n<p>You can validate information like file names, folder paths, and email addresses. This is important because if a customer gives us an email like the last one, our CRM system likely won\u2019t accept the values. It also means that we won\u2019t have invalid file and folder names, ensuring that our files will save correctly.<\/p>\n<h2>Use DriveWorks to Format for You<\/h2>\n<p>One function that doesn\u2019t get much attention is <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/docs.driveworkspro.com\/Topic\/Text\">TEXT<\/a><\/strong>. TEXT lets you format data as it comes in. That\u2019s a great way you can format things like percentages, dates, and currency. The TEXT function receives your inputs and formats according to the format you set up.<\/p>\n<p>But sometimes data needs to be a specific type to go into your system. A great example is a SQL database. SQL lists each field as some kind of input. This might be something like a character value (char) or numeric (int). If your users aren\u2019t providing the data in the exact format you want, you\u2019ll notice data not populating in your tables. One great way around this is to use functions such as <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.driveworkspro.com\/Topic\/String\">STRING <\/a>or <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.driveworkspro.com\/Topic\/Number\">NUMBER<\/a>, which will transform your data into another format.<\/p>\n<h2>Formatting Phone Numbers<\/h2>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-52945 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/PhoneNumber.png\" alt=\"Now that I've formatted my text with DriveWorks, I'll never lose Jenny's number!\" width=\"565\" height=\"296\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Recently, some of the DriveWorks guys at InFlow were trying to figure this problem out. How do you format a phone number using DriveWorks 18? Simple, we said, it&#8217;s just formatting text with DriveWorks, nothing crazy! Little did we know, there&#8217;s a catch with how the text function works. Turns out, if the number it&#8217;s working with exceeds 999,999,999, the formatting goes out the<\/p>\n<p>window. So now what do we do? Well, there&#8217;s more than just &#8220;TEXT&#8221; at our disposal.<\/p>\n<p>In order to make the formatting work, we had to separate the text. Phone numbers are typically (123) 456-7890, so that&#8217;s doable. The <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/docs.driveworkspro.com\/Topic\/Left#:~:text=The%20Left%20function%20returns%20the,first%20character%20in%20the%20text.\">Left<\/a> <\/strong>and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/docs.driveworkspro.com\/Topic\/Right\">Right<\/a> <\/strong>functions let you grab sections of text and use that instead of the full length. And by using those, along with text, this was the result:<\/p>\n<h2>Dialing it in<\/h2>\n<p>We all know that formatting is important. It&#8217;s how we keep track of information. Not only that, it&#8217;s how our systems track information as well. Now we can port our data into any system. Whether that&#8217;s SQL, Excel, or anything else, we&#8217;re ready to add information.\u00a0And better than that, clean and accurate formatting ensures a great experience for our customers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pop quiz: Jenny just gave you her phone number, which way is easier to read? (555) 867-5309 or 5558675309? If you want any way of remembering this, you probably said the first option (or just remembered the song). So how does this work with DriveWorks? You probably don\u2019t need an easy way of remembering numbers, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":157727,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2245,2237],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-driveworks-2","category-general-information"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v22.5 (Yoast SEO v22.5) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Formatting Text with DriveWorks - Computer Aided Technology<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Let&#039;s talk about formatting text with DriveWorks. Formatting makes data easier to read for not only ourselves, but the systems receiving the data we create.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Formatting Text with DriveWorks\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Let&#039;s talk about formatting text with DriveWorks. Formatting makes data easier to read for not only ourselves, but the systems receiving the data we create.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/blog\/formatting-text-with-driveworks\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Computer Aided Technology\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ComputerAidedTechnology\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-08-28T18:38:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-04-20T23:12:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/PhoneNumber-1.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"641\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"336\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Nick Sweeney\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@CATISolidWorks\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@CATISolidWorks\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Nick Sweeney\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/blog\/formatting-text-with-driveworks\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/blog\/formatting-text-with-driveworks\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Nick Sweeney\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/#\/schema\/person\/73131f11c09ff48be3af472722f2450a\"},\"headline\":\"Formatting Text with DriveWorks\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-08-28T18:38:44+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-04-20T23:12:50+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/blog\/formatting-text-with-driveworks\/\"},\"wordCount\":685,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/blog\/formatting-text-with-driveworks\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/PhoneNumber-1.png\",\"articleSection\":[\"DriveWorks\",\"General Information\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/blog\/formatting-text-with-driveworks\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/blog\/formatting-text-with-driveworks\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/blog\/formatting-text-with-driveworks\/\",\"name\":\"Formatting Text with DriveWorks - Computer Aided Technology\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/blog\/formatting-text-with-driveworks\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.cati.com\/blog\/formatting-text-with-driveworks\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/PhoneNumber-1.png\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-08-28T18:38:44+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-04-20T23:12:50+00:00\",\"description\":\"Let's talk about formatting text with DriveWorks. 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