I have created a Survey with the following date fields (I have other fields of course, but that's not the issue). And I re-post this because an additional item was closed without being answered correctly in my mind.
I have...
Type=Date
Type=Start
Type=End
for date fields. Respectively I get... From the same records
Type=Date... 3/22/2016 5:00:00 AM (ALWAYS CURRENT DATE AND 5:00 AM.)
Type=Start... 3/22/2016 7:15:05 PM
Type=End...3/22/2016 7:19:38 PM
Notes for this record from the person collecting the data showed 2:16 PM
Can you see my concern here? Where are the times coming from. Granted the hand entered 2:16 pm may either be central time or mountain time as we work in both zones, but again that is not the main point. Where are these times coming from, the Arc GIS online Server? Somewhere in England? The variance in my dataset between the DATE and the START and END times is consistently 5 OR 6 hours off. I'm OK with that point but How can I change it. Our standard since we commonly work in both time zones is to collect all of our data in CENTRAL STANDARD TIME, is there any way I can set Survey123 to collect data in that specific time? Again, I really just want to know WHERE the Start and END times come from?
Suggestion to my fellow Survey123 users is to use a START time for the survey along with Date and then do some sort of conversion as I have yet to see DATE give anything but the date and an hourly time.
Any Help would be appreciated. and also this is consistent with several different tablets in the field and all tablets are set to the current local time.
Any Ideas?
Hi Dean,
sorry we did not take your question earlier. I had seen your note some time ago, but could not find time to respond. I did a quick test with the attached XLSFile (Times.xlsx), which I think will bring some light into how things work. You will find there the following:
Once published, I captured data and sent to a feature service. The following screenshot shows the results:
Here is what happened:
Here are a few things to keep in mind:
The above goes in detail into how dates and times work in Survey123. I understand that your question was very specific: what start and end really mean? By the book, start and end where added to help you figure out how much time the enumerator spent filling out the survey. This can be useful when doing QA\QC. Again, by the book, start will capture the time when the Survey is originally opened, and end when the Survey is flagged as completed. That is, when you tap on the bottom-left corner of the Survey to either save the data locally, or send it. There can be a big difference between the time when the survey is flagged as done and the time when the data is actually sent.
I hope this will clarify a bit what you should expect.
Thanks,
Ismael
Thank you, your answer explains it perfectly and the potential work arounds. I'm sure others will find this info valuable as well. Keep up the good work on the product!
Dean