Enable local time formatting of UTC date/time data

[AJR]

It would be nice if ArcGIS Pro had a feature that allowed for the display of data stored in UTC time to be displayed in local time.  For fields (i.e. editor tracking) that are stored as UTC, having to manually do the timezone, conversion is a pain.  A way to tell ArcGIS Pro to display the UTC date/time as local time (from the machine that AGP is running on) should be relatively easy to implement but would be extremely helpful.

[TanuHoque]

@AJR 

Unfortunately Pro doesn't allow you to choose any time zone at this point. That said, we introduced a new concept in services i.e. Preferred time zone. When the preferred time zone metadata is available for a service, Pro shows date/times in that time zone.

please see more information here:
https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-pro/mapping/working-with-agol-feature-services-date...

https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/help/data/services/use-web-feature-layers.htm#ESRI_SECTION1...

https://enterprise.arcgis.com/en/server/10.9/publish-services/windows/edit-map-service-settings.htm#...

and finally a video for a tech session from last UC on this topic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esb8X-1TtPk

[AJR]

Thanks, but the preferred time zone stuff doesn't help when accessing local geodatabase data.  This idea request is for the enhancement of AGP to allow for enabling/disabling the formatting/display of data stored in one time zone (i.e. UTC) to be displayed in local time.

[KoryKramer]

Hi @AJR thanks for the clarification.  I guess to add a question, for the Editor Tracking example that you cite in the idea's original description, is there a reason that you are storing those times in UTC if you are not using services, rather than storing in database time?  Is the database time not your local time?

See the How times are recorded section of the editor tracking help.

Do you have other fields (i.e. not editor tracking fields) that you store in UTC but need to view in local time?  If so, what is the business reason to store them in UTC if just used locally?

Thanks for any additional info about your use case that you can provide!

[AJR]

Yes, I do have other fields that are recorded in UTC that aren't the editor tracking fields.  This is fairly common for data that's edited by users who are spread across multiple time zones.  All data is stored as UTC and then displayed as appropriate to the user in their local time zone.  This would apply to whether the data is stored as UTC or database time and want the time to be displayed in their local timezone (which can be something other than database time for folks working remotely).

Thanks!

A.J.

[TanuHoque]

Thanks, but the preferred time zone stuff doesn't help when accessing local geodatabase data. This idea request is for the enhancement of AGP to allow for enabling/disabling the formatting/display of data stored in one time zone (i.e. UTC) to be displayed in local time.

Thanks @AJR for the clarification. Sorry that I was thinking your suggestions in context of service layer, not while consuming enterprise dataset directly in ArcGIS Pro.

[KoryKramer]

Thanks, A.J.

For your work, have you thought about where it would make sense to have such a setting?  That is, at the application level, project, map, or layer?  Just wondering.  We have the idea back open. Thank you for the additional details!

[AJR]

I'm not sure where makes the most sense in terms of the level of development effort required, but from a user perspective, I think it makes sense to have the setting at the layer level.  If the date/time field supported storing the timezone with the data (which it doesn't as far as I know) having it as an application-level checkbox for "display dates/times in local timezone" would be awesome.  However, since AGP doesn't "know" about the timezone that the data is stored in, it probably makes sense to have this be a layer option where the timezone of the field is defined and then there's an option to display the data in local time (or maybe any timezone if the developers wanted to get really fancy).

[Anonymous User]

Love the idea, just had the idea myself today - after adjusting the feature services preferred time zone and being able to see that in Pro - would be nice to have that available for the data itself in ArcGIS Pro. This would be very useful for the reasons @AJR states. Thanks.

[TanuHoque]

@AJR, @Anonymous User 

Thanks for you inputs. Please keep adding your requirements and use cases here. 

If the date/time field supported storing the timezone with the data (which it doesn't as far as I know)

There are some databases that support storing timezone offset. We are thinking of supporting that in near-term (I'm not making any promises though 😛 ). 

[WalkerHenry__NIFCAdmin]

Hi @KoryKramer, @TanuHoque,

Would love to see this functionality for wildfire GIS, both the display and input of date fields.

Sounds like our use case is similar, but with a hosted service.
We have users editing a national service in both Pro and Web/Mobile Apps and the difference in reading/entering dates in each causes confusion.

Setting a preferred time zone doesn't work for us because end users span all US time zones, but most all users want to be able to input dates in the local time through Pro.

For our use case, I'd prefer to see the conversion to local time in Pro as the default behavior for any hosted feature services.

Thanks,
Walker