We have an issue when using the gocanvas app relating to daylight savings.
We need to record sample times in the field on go canvas in New Zealand Standard Time (NZST).
The time in gocanvas is taken from the time on our phone.\
During the summer months our phone times are set to New Zealand Daylight Savings time (NZDT) which has a one hour difference to NZST.
Currently we need to either change the time at every sample point, which is laborious and can lead to human error, or change the phone time whilst out sampling, which impacts on other aspects of phone use such as calendar invites and other apps.
It would be great if there was a way to keep NZST throughout the year without the need to manage this manually (either every day or every six months).
I appreciate the solution you offered which was to create a second time field at each site (with current time minus one hour), however this would only work in the summer months, and would be laborious to change in the several hundred sites we have in our network.
If you could communicate this to the app developers in order to try and provide a solution, such as providing an option in canvas to select standard time as default through all apps that would be great.
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Hi Vanitha,
This is an interesting feature request. The work-around with the second time field is a good one. I'd probably have that field be conditional on a multiple choice field that said something like "Does this sample take place during daylight savings?" and, if the user selects yes, only then would the secondary date field appear. You could set that field to be no by default during winter months, and yes by default during the summer to make that even easier. Having that initial field would also make it easier if you wanted to do this type of data manipulation outside of GoCanvas (for example, in Excel), as you could filter by that field and make changes just to that data set.
Hi Sara,
Thank you for the suggestion and comments .
Yes it will work but with the time recorded automatically the field workers would not be able to go and change it manually . Considering it as a special option something should be developed to enable this feature. Further, we have quiet more apps within gocanvas and not feasible to manually go and change it .
Earlier I have raised this query with Shakil Ahmed who suggested of adding a new field for time . Perhaps this doesn't work as we have to manually update the field for all the apps. I have been asked to raise this as a feature request . Is there something can be done to provide a solution to day light savings.
Thanks
Vanitha