topic Re: Survey123 default date format in ArcGIS Survey123 Questions

Survey123 default date format

NaomiBegg2 — Thu, 09 Aug 2018 06:03:50 GMT

Here I am with yet another date format issue.

I have a date question in my survey. I have asked for the appearance to be Day, month and year. I would like to have the submitting date as my default.

Sounds great ... BUT the default date is coming up in the American format rather than the common format for my region. This will lead to confusion for whoever uses the survey thinking they are entering the wrong date and therefore the survey will not be used.

Within our organisation settings we have specified our region. It would be great if it would pick up this and use an appropriate date format (or even a global standard).

Is there anyway I can fix this?

Re: Survey123 default date format

JamesTedrick — Thu, 09 Aug 2018 21:02:53 GMT

Hi Naomi,

Are you using the web form? If so, this is an issue we are looking to address in a future release of Survey123 by displaying the appropriate format for based on the user's locale.

Re: Survey123 default date format

NaomiBegg2 — Thu, 09 Aug 2018 21:07:00 GMT

Hi James

Yes I was using the web form. Yay this is a huge issue for us non Americans that really restrict the ability to roll out surveys (and editing apps) to our non technical population.

Is the web form looking like it will get on par with connect soon?

Thanks, Naomi

Re: Survey123 default date format

ZhifangWang — Fri, 10 Aug 2018 02:54:40 GMT

Hi Naomi,

Can you please specify which region/locale and what the expected date format do you want to use?

Re: Survey123 default date format

NaomiBegg2 — Fri, 10 Aug 2018 03:01:11 GMT

Hi Zhifang

I am from New Zealand so day/month/year is our preferred date format.

Even the international date format standard (ISO 8601) would be a more acceptable default rather than pushing everyone to use the American format.

Re: Survey123 default date format

ZhifangWang — Tue, 14 Aug 2018 12:10:20 GMT

Hi Naomi,

Thanks for the feedback.

Currently, the date format in Survey123 website or the web app/form is determined by the following order which is consitent with ArcGIS Online:

If the user has signed in, will use the locale set in the user profile
If the user has not signed in, will use the locale set in the org which the survey belongs to
If the user has not signed in and no default locale specified in the org which the survey belongs to, will use the browser's locale

For the locale setting of the org or user profile in ArcGIS Online, currently, New Zealand date/number format is not supported, hence, will fall back to the United States (en-US) format. If the language is English, you can set the date and number format for Australia, Great Britain, Canada, or the United States. See Set language and region—ArcGIS Online Help | ArcGIS for details. The most similar one is the Australia date/number format.

However, we did found a bug that Survey123 website/web app does not respect the date/number format if it's supported in ArcGIS Onlilne, such as Australia date/number format. I've logged an issue in our dev repo to fix it in a future release.

Please let us know if you have any other question.

Re: Survey123 default date format

NaomiBegg2 — Tue, 14 Aug 2018 21:02:59 GMT

Surely there must be a way to connect us to our nearest neighbours Australia for date formats? Or even connect us to the UK for dates ... anything would be better than America (nothing against them ... they just do things funny ).

What effect would it have on other things if we did change our organisation settings to pretend to be in Australia - hmm basemaps would change. As this date issue is a pretty major thing if we are wanting our non technical staff to be using the likes of Survey123.

Re: Survey123 default date format

ZhifangWang — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 03:21:21 GMT

Changing the number/date format in org/account settings (e.g. to Australia) not only affects Survey123 (it will actually not work due to the bug) but also other apps in ArcGIS Platform, such as Map Viewer, Web AppBuilder app, please evaluate if it's feasible to do so. However, seems the underlying solution is to suggest ArcGIS Online add support for number/date format for New Zealand too.

Re: Survey123 default date format

RachelS — Wed, 07 Aug 2019 07:58:01 GMT

Has this bug been resolved? I have the Date and Number format set to Great Britain and it's still coming up as American format on the Survey123 form.

Re: Survey123 default date format

ZhifangWang — Thu, 08 Aug 2019 03:34:16 GMT

Hi Rachel,

Not yet, you can track the status of this bug in BUG-000117569: Survey123 for ArcGIS surveys with internationally fo.. .

Thanks,

Zhifang

Re: Survey123 default date format

ColinCampbell — Tue, 05 Nov 2019 13:31:16 GMT

Just to say that it would be extremely useful if this bug got fixed. We're working on surveys for use by the general public and we're having to use three fields - a separate one for date, month and year - to get around it. It's not a great fix but the alternative is to have something that confuses our users and could lead to incorrect data being entered/collected.

Also, the synopsis of the bug above seems to suggest the issue is around submitted responses in the attribute table being in US format. The main issue (assuming they are the same bug) is that the Survey123 web form asks for and displays the date in US format even though an organisation's settings are set to GB format.

Re: Survey123 default date format

JamesTedrick — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 18:40:42 GMT

Hi Colin,

There was a separate BUG regarding behavior of the webform - BUG-000112106. This was addressed in version 3.4, but may not be applicable in the particular case of en-GB - the form is basing format on language code (i.e., label::Español (es) ); you would need to modify your forms to note that the language is English (en_GB) .

Re: Survey123 default date format

ColinCampbell — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 09:01:29 GMT

Hi James,

Many thanks for this. I’ve given it a go, but it says ‘The follow following language declarations do not contain valid machine-readable codes: English (en_GB).’

I've tried it with French and it works fine though. Is en_GB perhaps not supported or am I doing something wrong?

Re: Survey123 default date format

ZhifangWang — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 08:37:51 GMT

Hi Colin,

Thanks for your feedback.

The fix to this bug will respect the date and number format setting in the user's profile, and in the Survey123 website/web app, the setting in user's profile takes precedence over the org's setting. Does this make sense to you?

Thanks,

Zhifang

Re: Survey123 default date format

ColinCampbell — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 09:28:41 GMT

Hi Zhifang,

To be 100% honest I'm not sure if I does make sense to me anymore 🙂

I have a public survey which will be used by people in the UK (so needs a dd/mm/yyyy type date format). My my profile's date settings are for Great Britain, as is my organisation's (see below), and my browser is set up for English (United Kingdom), but the question in the web version of the survey still displays as m/d/yy. This is the case if I log in using my AGOL account or I do it as a member of the public would (i.e. without signing in at all).

I've tried James' suggestion above and that fixes it if I change it to French (the calendar control is obviously in French though), but if I put in 'English (en_GB)' it won't recognise it.

I don't know if this is related to this bug or another bug - or if I'm just being stupid and doing something wrong! If there's a way for me to fix it though that would be amazing.

Thanks again

Col

Re: Survey123 default date format

ZhifangWang — Wed, 04 Dec 2019 08:39:16 GMT

Hi Colin,

Thanks for the tests and the above information. Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do to make the format works as you expect until we deliver the fix to this bug. You can track the status at BUG-000117569 Survey123 for ArcGIS surveys with internationally formatted date questions display submitted responses in the US date format in the attribute table.

After fixing, the sequence for deciding the format would be: language setting in the XLSForm (if any) > language/format settings in the user profile in ArcGIS Online > browser setting (for a public survey).

Thanks,

Zhifang

Re: Survey123 default date format

DataOfficer — Thu, 27 Feb 2020 10:11:25 GMT

I have the same issue as illustrated by Colin Campbell‌. We are also running wildlife surveys in Great Britain and require the date format to be dd/mm/yyyy. Any updates as to when this bug will be resolved?
Zhifang Wang

Re: Survey123 default date format

ZhifangWang — Fri, 28 Feb 2020 17:20:40 GMT

Hi Rob,

Thank you for the feedback. The issue is currently "in consideration" in our backlog, I've added your comment to our internal issue.

In the meantime, it would help to prioritize the issue if you can reach to Esri Support about this bug: BUG-000117569

Thanks,

Zhifang

Re: Survey123 default date format

RobertDriessen1 — Sat, 14 Nov 2020 05:22:23 GMT

Have we had any progress on this yet. I have had a frustrating day trying to get my dates display in a non USA format. I am in Australia and this is a severe limitiation for Survey 123. I want to use it for applying for a permit for burn registrations. The users are farmers and if they see 10/11/2020 they are going to assume the date that they can burn is 10 Nov but becuase ofthe misleading date display on the form they have actually requested the date 11 Oct. Is there some sort of work around please?

Its worth noting that this problem only occurs when using the form on browsers (chrome firefox ie and edge) on a windows computer. The form works as expected (dates display correctly) on iphone and android regardless of the browser.

Re: Survey123 default date format

ColinCampbell1 — Mon, 14 Dec 2020 14:01:20 GMT

I'd also love to know the progress on this. The bug referenced above says it's been implemented and fixed in 3.1.1, but I still get the dates displaying in US format. Also looking at the information in the bug it seems like it's referring to a different issue.

It's really frustrating and risks people entering incorrect data.