With the October 2023 release of Map Viewer, we are introducing support for setting the map’s time zone. Time zone support will give you the ability to control the display of date-time data across popups, tables, labels, legend, time slider, and charts. Map Viewer and other ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript apps like Instant Apps and Story Maps will support this new time zone setting. With future releases, this will be broadly supported across the platform. The time zone setting will only change the display of date fields that are “time zone aware”. This means the new time zone support will work with the existing Date and Timestamp Offset fields and not Date-Only or Time-Only fields. To learn more about those fields check out Emily’s blog.
Before this release, the display of date-time in web applications in ArcGIS Online would always use the device time zone. For example with this sample web map showing hurricanes would display date-time in EST to me with my device set to EST and my coworkers on the west coast would see the times displayed in PST when viewing a popup or table. Then if you opened the map in ArcGIS Pro the time zone would be presented with no adjustments coming from device time zones. To bring a unifying experience across the platform and give additional control to map authors we are introducing the Time zone setting in Map Viewer.
Using the Time Zone Setting
The Time zone setting has 3 options:
- Device time zone
- Specific time zone
- Data’s time zone (no adjustment)
These 3 options give you the control you will need to set the experience on date fields in the map. Check out the examples below to learn which option is best for your map and viewers.
Device time zone
By default, web maps will use the option Device time zone. This matches the behavior for web maps before the October 2023 release. This means you won’t see a change in behavior with date field display compared to your previous experiences and won’t alter maps once resaved. Below is a web map showing the hurricanes web map showing how the popup displays for viewers in EST and PST. This would be the same experience as well for other areas where date-time values are displayed like tables and time slider.
To help you know what time zone your browser is reporting you can check the new Time Zone label widget we have located just under Search. Clicking on this will expand out and show you the IANA time zone name. We will cover more about the IANA time zone naming as we dig into the Specific time zone option under the Time Zone setting.
Specific time zone
Under Device time zone is Specific time zone. Using a specific time zone will set the time zone value to a specific IANA time zone. For those not familiar with the IANA time zone, this naming is standardized by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. This list of time zones was generated to solve the problems that came from different time zone naming conventions being used around the world. An example with different naming you may see would be between Windows using Central European Standard Time while other sources may call it Central European Time. The IANA list of time zones can be identified by continent or ocean along with the largest city within the region containing the clocks used to define the time zone. By default, it will select the time zone reported by the browser to help with selection. The list of IANA time zones is searchable by continent or city names. So if you start to type Aus to search for Australia, you will see the results filter down. The IANA time zone naming is supported in the web map and arcade today and future updates will add support in ArcGIS Pro and REST.
If we take the map above and change the specific time zone to America/New York – no matter where you view this in the world the date time fields will only honor the specific time zone set in the map. In the case of the hurricane tracking web map, if you are using this in the map within an article that is referencing specific dates and times for landfall you will want the date times being used in popups, tables, labels, legend, time slider, and bookmarks to reflect the specific time zone. Setting this value in the end is giving all users the same consistent experience. The Time zone label widget will also help users view the maps time zone without having to go to the settings and can see the time zone name for the map is New York(America).
Data’s time zone (no adjustments)
If you are familiar with ArcGIS Pro’s experience with displaying date time you will see that no adjustments are made to the time. If the layer is published with a preferred time zone, Pro will display the values following that time zone set on the layer. When you set the web map to Data’s time zone you will see that the map will now honor the preferred time zone and no adjustments are made in the display of the date values. In the case where no preferred time zone is set the date fields will be displayed in UTC. If you have a case where multiple layers have different preferred time zones they will honor what has been set in the service. Currently some experiences will be limited when using the Data’s time zone. Specifically you will see time slider disabled at this release but we are working towards supporting this in a future update.
Expanding Support for Time Zones
This is just the initial release for time zones in web maps. As mentioned above we are working on expanding support for this in other apps and have additional widgets and components add support for this new setting.
Russell, can you share any information on plans to enable this for Feature Layers that are not “hosted” but are “registered” ArcGIS Server services? Is there a realistic chance of that happening? That would help us plan ahead. Great blog post, thank you.
looking into this and will post a new reply when I have some info for you.
How will Full-Text Field Indexes work for feature layers we do not own? If an index is created when the search is added, assume you need to be the owner of the feature layer.
What is the feature layer is either a Living Atlas layer, or another agencies rest service. What is the best way to add a search to those layers?
Indexes are built by owners or admins bc this info is added to the service definition. The non-index case where the index does not exist on the service will use the search without the leading wildcard.
Thank for for the fast response.
For the non-index cases does the lack of leading wildcard mean you are unable to search “Baltimore Post Office“.
When the full name is “Highlandtown Station Baltimore Post Office”, previously we have used contain for this, recently have seen some issues with the search results.
Yup you would have to add the % manually in front of the “Baltimore Post” Office to get the “Highlandtown Station Baltimore Post Office” result.
Awesome, great to know thank you.
I wish there was an option to automatically add the “%” in the search configuration options. The general public would not think to add it if they are just trying to find a Post Office.
Adding the indexing is only an option, if I own the data.
Is this something that is implemented automatically when we create a hosted feature service? Also, you mentioned Instant Apps and the application settings of a web map – is there documentation on how to do this in the settings of a web map? What about Experience Builder?
The index gets generated either when search is configured in the web map settings or instant app layer based search. No changes were made to the feature search authoring experience in map settings. Once you setup your layer the index gets built behind the scenes. Experience Builder will support it in the next release. https://doc.arcgis.com/en/arcgis-online/create-maps/configure-feature-search.htm
The Search widget doesn’t work in our maps since the November release. Or it works as ‘starts with’ while the search is configured as ‘contains’. I could repair this in a few maps by deleting/re-adding the search on layer settings, but this trick doesn’t work with most maps. This is really annoying and confusing for our users, is it meant to be so? This is not documented, and our local distributor didn’t seem to be aware of the problem neither. Are we really the only ones experiencing this?
Yes this change switched from using the double wildcard to a single wildcard at the end of the searched characters. Adding a % at the beginning will restore the same search but this is something we want to move away from because this can cause stability issues for your content depending on the number of active searches taking place, num of characters being used and the num of characters in the field rows the searched characters are being compared against. You can add a full text index either through making a change through the search settings config panel or if… Read more »
Hi Russell, the first option doesn’t work in most cases, so I’d like to hear about the second one, thank you.
When you go to the addToDefinition on the rest endpoint of your Hosted Feature Layer (not the top level but the individual sub layers) and no other Full-Text index exists you will remove the text already in the text box and enter this below with the fields you want to be used. Name must be unique. { “name”: “fulltext_indx”, “indexType”: “FullText”, “fields”: “FeatureCategory” (coma separated fields you want to have an index on, only one fulltext index per layer) } If a fulltext index already exists that needs to be deleted from the definition first before adding new field indexes.… Read more »
It just doesn’t work with a layer with views, I can’t use addToDefinition.
Error message:
Adding the index works for another layer without views, I can see the index is added when printing the properties, but the search still doesn’t work in the map, even after deleting the map’s search conditions – saving – re-adding the search conditions.
So what do I do now? This really sucks, the search widget was working perfectly before, this is not an enhancement but a regression for us.
For the above issue can you log a support ticket for us to investigate and track? Please include a sample of the feature value you are trying to search for.
The change had to be made b/c the old search method could impact your entire orgs performance and stability.
Hi Russell, I have a ticket logged with my local distributor since 25 November (#03206890). They say they’re in touch with Esri US. Do you have access to it?
Yup I can see it.
For the view case – the index exists on the parent layer not the view. So you wouldn’t need to build the index on the view layer. If you do this in a map you can see in the network the addToDef gets applied to the parent and not the view. The view leverages the FT index and you will see in the search widget the query going through the view using the FT index.
I’m not using the views. But the feature layer I’d like to update (and can’t) has related views.
And anyway, the search still doesn’t work with a layer with a full text index successfully added.
Will need to see the map, layer and the search you are trying to perform.
Your comment earlier mentioned you are using it with views and trying to add it to a view.
I said it doesn’t work with a layer with views. How could I give you access to the maps and layers?
Add them to the support case or create a post on Esri ArcGIS Online community which we can use to further look at the issue. Share the content to a group and invite russell_jsapi into it.
I’ve invited you to a group with the maps and layers, but not sure how I can add them to the case. And should I keep on writing here, or via the case, or email?
Create a post under the ArcGIS Online community and I’ll catch it and jump in. I just need to know the map and layer being searched. Thanks!
OK, done. Thanks!
9/25/2023 – Russell I have enabled search on my “Web Map”. This then automatically as noted in documentation enables that search in the “Field Apps”. I see documentation that says it also instantly enables that search in the new apps. I have an “Instant – Side Bar App” and the search bar shows my configurable words from the “Web Map” in that App where I put “Hint Text – Search My Data” but nothing returns. Is there still some disconnect? I wanted to avoid configuring the search in the “Instant – Side Bar App”
Solved it: In the “Instant – Side Bar App” I had to enable “Search Configuration – All Sources”. Otherwise it was just searching my top layer.