Tested by creating a new accession without accession date. The date displays as "unknown" in view mode and as a blank field in edit mode. The json appears to have the desired data "9999-12-31" so I'd call this complete.

The intended behavior is that you can leave the accession date blank and it will save the dummy date (9999-12-31) as the accession date and not cause an error. This should be analogous to having 'undated' in DACS. Then any accession dates that are 9999-12-31 should display 'unknown' in the staff interface. 9999-12-31 just serves as a placeholder since there has to be something there, but it shouldn't ever be visible in the staff interface.

Not exactly sure what is to be tested here. The issue seems to be about import of accessions data, but could relate to manual creation so I tested that doing the following.

• Create new accession.

• Used value "Undated" in accession date field which resulted in an error "Accession Date: not a valid date" after saving.

• Then used "9999-12-31" as value for Accession Date, which did not result in an error on save, but the value did not appear to be actually saved as the record showed "unknown" as the Accession Date value in the "read" view/mode, and there is no value in the Accession Date field in the edit mode.

Please let me know if you would like me to test differently

Passing with the suggested solutions. , would you be willing to update Tech Docs re: the dummy date importing? Lydia - on behalf of Dev. Pri.

Github issue: https://github.com/archivesspace/archivesspace/issues/582