How to set Timestamp property for column in External Content Type?

Question

I created External Content Type (.ect) in Visual Studio. It is based on Netweaver service. One of the columns called LastChangeDate.

I added this content type to SharePoint and configured crawl on that BCS source.

I want to be able to use that column as timestamp, for incremental crawl. I read in this blog post, that i need to set Timestamp property on that column. How can I do it? I cannot find this option in Visual Studio.

Answer 1

Open SharePoint Designer and edit the operations of the ECT.

Select the field "LastChangeDate" and set the Timestamp property

Answer 2

With help of this article on MSDN (in section Changelog-Based Incremental Crawls), I was able to figure it out. I had to open the created .ect file in text editor and add a filter.

Inside method named: ReadAllContactPerson:

<Parameter Name="@PartnerChangeDate" Direction="In">
  <TypeDescriptor Name="PartnerChangeDate" DefaultDisplayName="PartnerChangeDate" 
                  TypeName="System.DateTime" CreatorField="true" 
                  AssociatedFilter="PartnerChangeDate">
    <Interpretation>
      <NormalizeDateTime LobDateTimeMode="UTC" />
    </Interpretation>
  </TypeDescriptor>
</Parameter>

   ...

    <FilterDescriptors>
        <FilterDescriptor Name="PartnerChangeDate" Type="Timestamp" />
    </FilterDescriptors>

Pay attention to:

• Add AssociatedFilter attribute to descriptor of the column with timestamp
• Create a FilterDescriptor for the above filter, give it type Timestamp