Timezone issue

[NatashaDakouri-Hild]

Hi all.

Just came back from fieldwork having used survey123 successfully. I did have this one issue I couldn't figure out. The project was situated in Greece but the form entries kept getting a wrong date and time (the preceding day, presumably default EST). The tablets where Survey123 was operating from had the correct (local, i.e. Greek timezone) and were offline most of the time (wifi enabled only). The creationdate field correctly captured the correct date. But the field where a date was entered by collectors (using the correct field type in XLS) systematically outputted a day later. Can exclude human error as the error was systematic and across board. I noticed the same issue on my 5g connected cell where I downloaded the same form so it's not specific to the tablets or the wifi or whatever. I was trying to see if Survey123 Connect has a setting somewhere for these forms for timezone that potentially overrides device and network settings. None to be found. Any clues why this was happening? It meant tons of manual edits and QC daily.

Thanks

[JamesTedrick]

Hi Natasha,

Where are viewing the results from?  If this is concerning a date field, the issue may be that the date has been stored as local midnight in the time zone of collection (UTC+3) occurs on the previous day in the timezone you are viewing (for example, EDT is UTC-05, so 'today' in Greece appears as 22:00 the previous day).

We are changing Survey123 to record local noon in the future, which should help reduce these types of errors.

[EmilyChudek]

Hello James, 

Any progress on changing Survey123 to record local noon? I'm currently having a similar issue and wondering if their is a fix or if this fix in this support article is my only option? 

Thanks!