Hi Jared,
Is your date field always comes in the format YYYY.MM.DD?
If you are looking for conversion of string to date, you can try below steps:
Create a formula with below content on your database field (assuming it is coming as a string):
numberVar d := toNumber(right({database field}, 2));
numberVar m := toNumber(mid({database field}, 6,2));
numberVar y := toNumber(left({database field}, 4));
cDate(y, m, d)
Use this formula instead of the date field and use format field option to change it required date format since the output of the formula content will be a date.
Hope this helps.
Thanks,
Raghavendra