Can the system handle date/time fields that need to automatically update based on current date (e.g., automatically populating year/month dropdowns without manual updates)?
Yes, from the Date variable you can calculate the year, month, and day. However, for that, one has to enter the date and time stamp, which is a good option. Create a time variable, say, Date, and check the current time stamp. Make that a mandatory question so that the enumerator cannot skip it.
For example, if Date is the time variable, then to extract the year you need to create a Double variable and use Date.Value.Year. Similarly, for the month, use Date.Value.Month. Add static text to show the results.
To display the 12th month as December, you need to create a String variable and use Date.Value.ToString("MMMM").
Hope this helps.
Every interview gets an automatic timestamp when it is started. And another timestamp when it is completed. (you will find both of them in the interview__actions file). And a timestamp for any change in between (you will find them in the paradata).
Answering a Date-type question (like @rrsahu suggests) requires an interviewer to make this action (enter the answer), and is thus it is not an automatic capture.
One cannot do “automatically populating year/month dropdowns” because any categories in the dropdowns must be there in the design time. That said, one can arrive at the same result by reducing the provided items to only a desired set (starting with a wider one), which is going to be indistinguishable to the interviewer. This is achieved with filtering.
Given the lack of context I’d guess that the timestamp question (Date question with current time option checked) is the best way here.
If it is about the specific moment when the interview is started, then keep in mind that it is not accessible in syntax. See this ticket: Make the interview-started timestamp available in the syntax · Issue #1957 · surveysolutions/surveysolutions · GitHub which you can upvote, implement, or sponsor. At the moment it is graded as ‘low-priority’.