CreateDuration

This task creates a Duration variable to be used with a DateTime variable.

Use it whenever a ruleset needs to shift a date/time value forward or backward — for example, calculating a payment due date 30 days from an invoice date, flagging documents that are more than 24 hours old, adding a processing buffer before a scheduled retry, or setting an expiration date some number of months in the future. CreateDuration builds the offset; you'd then typically apply it against a DateTime variable (e.g., using a date-arithmetic action) to get the resulting date/time.

Properties:

Behavior notes:

• Negative numeric values are not allowed and will throw an exception — there's no built-in validation to catch this beforehand, so check inputs upstream if they come from a variable.
• At least one value must be supplied; an entirely empty duration throws an exception.
• 0 is valid in any field (e.g., a duration of all zeros is fine).
• Any non-negative number is accepted in each field.
• If IsNegative isn't explicitly true (or a Boolean variable evaluating to true), it defaults to false — meaning the duration is treated as pointing to the future unless you say otherwise.

Example: To represent "45 days from now," you'd set:

• IsNegative: false
• Days: 45
• (all other fields: 0)

To represent "3 days ago," you'd set:

• IsNegative: true
• Days: 3

See also: CreateList for building structured collections; Ruleset Actions M - T for date/time actions that likely consume a Duration (e.g., adding it to a DateTime).