CiviCRM - Drupal - Webform Submissions - how can I track the date submitted

Question

Here is the problem I am having... I am using a Drupal Civi web form to allow people to join a waitlist.

Obviously the time the form is submitted is important to where they are on the wait list.

I see two possibilities:

1. Use the Contact Record Creation Date - but this has some practical challenges. The contact creation date record is not easily usable in the various CiviCRM reports and searches (that field never shows up as usable in civi). And using that contact creation date as a proxy for the waitlist sign up date makes assumptions about the contact that might be incorrect in some use cases.
2. Using a new Field-Set for a Contact for waitlist purposes. This is nice because in that field set I can collect extra data such as a little bit about the person joining the waitlist. But this has a problem in that I can't figure out how to get that Civi Date Field pre-filled with [current-date] and either hidden or non-editable. I can get that new Civi Custom Field Set on the form just fine but I can't figure out how to get it set to [current-date].

Anyone following along or did I totally mangle the description of my problem?

Thanks

Answer 1

On the webform element config set the default value for your civicrm custom date and time fields to ‘now’.

Hide the field using a conditional, or set it to read only.