Sailing Alone Around the World is a sailing memoir by Joshua Slocum about his single-handed global circumnavigation aboard the sloop Spray. Between 24 April 1895 and 27 June 1898, Slocum, aboard the Spray, crossed the Atlantic twice, negotiated the Strait of Magellan, and crossed the Pacific. He also visited Australia and South Africa before crossing the Atlantic (for the third time) to return to Massachusetts after a journey of 46,000 miles. Slocum was the first person to sail around the world alone and we devote this release to him, his journey and wonderful book.
Here are the highlights for this update:
Critical Fixes and Enhancements
Survey123 field app and Connect:
You can download the latest version of Survey123 Connect and the Field app from our Survey123 Download page.
Survey123 website:
It is always recommended you clear your browser cache to make sure you get the latest updates on the survey123 website.
Survey123 configurations from Esri Solutions
This update coincides with four new ArcGIS for Local Government Esri Solutions configurations using Survey123:
All the configurations above have also been made available in Survey123 Connect for ArcGIS under the Community surveys.
New Decimal Date Time Format
As described in the https://community.esri.com/groups/survey123/blog/2016/04/17/dates-and-time-in-survey123-for-arcgis blog post, you can manipulate date and time objects in Survey123 working with their EPOCH representation, also known as Unix Time. Starting with this release, you can also work with Dates using the Decimal Date time format, also known as French Revolutionary Time.
We initially incorporated support for Date and Time handling via EPOCH format because that is how DateTime objects are encoded in ArcGIS. Other products out there using the XLSForms specification work with Decimal Date time, so we decided to bring support for this format as well.
The new Decimal Time format will be of your interest if you want surveys authored in Survey123 Connect to work in a web browser. Our next-generation Web Form engine, which we plan on making available this summer will support surveys authored in Survey123 Connect, but it will expect you to define DateTime calculations using the Decimal format.
Just to be clear, your existing EPOCH calculations will continue to work as usual in the Survey123 field app. Now, if you want in the future to have your Connect surveys also work within a web browser you will want to consider a change to French Revolutionary Time.
In truth, this change should be absolutely irrelevant to most of the surveys you may have authored. Using either EPOCH or Decimal Date calculations is only necessary in a handful of situations. For example:
For the most common uses of Date and Time objects in Survey123, you do not need to do any EPOCH or Decimal Date Time calculations. For example:
For those of you that you will be using Decimal Date Time calculations, here is a quick guide to time, according to the French:
The following table describes what different expressions look like using the EPOCH and Decimal formats:
EPOCH Format | Decimal Date Format | |
---|---|---|
2 weeks into the future | now() + 14*24*60*60*1000 | date(decimal-date-time(now()) + 14) |
Calculate age from birthday | int((today() - ${birth_date}) div (1000*24*60*60* 365.25)) | int((decimal-date-time(today()) - decimal-date-time(${birth_date})) div 365.25) |
Minutes spent for lunch | int(${LunchEnd} - ${LunchStart}) div (1000*60) | int((decimal-date-time(${lunchends}) - decimal-date-time(${lunchstarts})) * 24*60) |
15 minutes from now | now() + 15*60*1000 | date-time(decimal-date-time(now()) + 0.0104166675) |
In general, if you really have to use Time calculations as in the table above, I would recommend that you go with Decimal Date Time as opposed to EPOCH milliseconds. The reason is that working in this manner you will ensure your surveys work in both the native and web flavor of the Survey123 app. You never know when using a web browser may be handy, so getting things done in Decimal Time will prepare you for the web right away. Of course, you can continue using EPOCH if you feel more comfortable, but just remember that your calculations will not work on the web in the future.
As you play with the new Decimal Date Time format, I also wanted to point you to a couple of resources:
Next Steps
The next release with functional enhancements will be 2.3 in late July or early August. Some of the features we are working on include:
Expanding support for editing with repeats is planned for 2.4, which will most likely come in September.
If you are eager to try the above features and others planned for the 2.3 release, you can access them as Beta through our Early Adopter website.
We will continue looking closely at your comments in this GeoNet Group and our Early Adopter Community Website.
Keep your feedback coming!
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