As a GIS Pro, you already appreciate the power of date and time data for analyzing and tracking patterns over time. Whether you’re exploring population dynamics, weather events, or monitoring animal movements, you’re no stranger to the challenges of managing dates, times, and time zones. But, we’ve got your back! We’ve recently rolled out some cool new field types and web map settings to make managing temporal data easier.
In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the latest tools available to help you make the most of your data. Get ready to level up!
We’ll break this into 4 sections:
- Level Up Tip #1: Choose the Right Fields
- Level Up Tip #2: Set the Web Map Time Zone
- Level Up Tip #3: Preserve the Time Zone of the Data
- Level Up Tip #4: Adjust for Daylight Savings Time
Level Up Tip #1: Choose the Right Fields for Your Data
Previously, ArcGIS only had one field type for storing date and time information; a Date field type that combines both date and time values. In the original (OG) field, each date value has an associated time value, and vice versa. However, we recently introduced new field types that provide more flexibility. Let me break it down for you:
- The Date field is best when both date and time are important.
- The Date only field is ideal for tracking events, recording historical data, and conducting date-based queries where the time of the event is irrelevant.
- The Time only field stores only time values, without an associated date. It’s great for storing information like business hours or transit schedules.
- The Timestamp offset field stores date and time values and the time zone, stored as an offset from UTC. This is particularly useful for data that occurs across different time zones.
For more information on when to use the new field types, check out the article Time Is On Your Side with New Field Types in ArcGIS Online.
Level Up Tip #2: Set the Time Zone on your web map
In October 2023, we introduced support for setting the web map time zone. When you set the time zone on your map, you have more control over how date and time data is displayed across different elements such as popups, tables, and labels. It helps ensure that the way the values display is both accurate and consistent. To configure the map time zone in Map Viewer, expand the Time section in the Map properties pane. These are your options:
- Device time zone: This option displays the date and time based on the viewer’s device time.
- Specific time zone: With this option, you can choose a time zone from a drop-down menu. Date and time values will be displayed according to the selected time zone.
- Data’s time zone: This option displays the date and time data as-is, without any adjustments. It is based on the time zone set on the layer.
Selecting the appropriate time zone option helps ensure date and time values are displayed accurately in the web map. For a deeper dive into web map time zones, check out Working with Time Zones in Map Viewer.
Level Up Tip #3: Preserve the Data’s Time Zone
Preserve the Time Zone for the Layer
When you publish a layer with temporal information, from either ArcGIS Pro or from a file, you can set a time zone for the layer. This is handy when all of the data was collected in the same time zone, and you want to preserve that original time zone information with the layer.
Note: If you don’t specify a time zone for your data, the date and time data is assumed to be in UTC. That can affect how the date and time values are displayed online. We’ll talk about that in more detail later.
Preserve the Time Zone for each Feature
Selecting different time zones for different features was recently made possible with the introduction of the Timestamp offset field. This is especially useful when you’ve got a dataset with locations that span different time zones. When you use a Timestamp offset field, data editors can select the date, the time, and the time zone the feature was collected in when they create the feature. This preserves the time zone information for each feature in the layer. Pretty cool, huh?
The time zone is stored as an offset from UTC in hours and minutes. For example, when the time zone is 6 hours behind UTC, let’s call that UTC-06:00, the timestamp offset would be stored as -06:00, which appears after the date and time values. Visit ArcGIS Online help for more information on Timestamp offset fields.
Level Up Tip #4: Adjust for Daylight Savings Time
When publishing a layer from ArcGIS Pro, you can select the option to adjust for daylight savings time (DST). When this option is enabled, the display of the date and time values will be automatically adjusted, forward or back, based on when daylight savings time starts or ends in the region.
Exploring Strategies for Managing Date and Time Data
We’ll have a look at some scenarios where we could level up date and time data.
Example 1: Use the right field type
Imagine you have a dataset that uses the OG Date field type. You enter dates in this field, but no time. When you view the values, you notice that a time was added to the date. That’s because the Date field stores both date and time, always…so if you don’t enter a time value, a default time of 12:00 am (midnight) is automatically added.
Level Up Recommendation: When you’re working with dates that don’t require a time value, use the Date only field. Using the date only field eliminates the time component all together, making it easier to store and manage your date only data.
Example 2: Control the display of your data
We already touched on how time values are stored and displayed in ArcGIS- in UTC. Then, the display is adjusted based on the device time. Often displaying dates this way provides an accurate, user-friendly experience. But that’s not always the case. Imagine you have a date and time value of:
1/1/2023 12:00 am
When that value is viewed on a device in another time zone 1 hour earlier, it displays as:
12/31/2022 11:00 pm
The time, the date, and even the year changed, or rather, the way they display was adjusted based on the time zone difference. What can you do when you want to prevent these types of adjustments? You’ve got options. Some possible ways to level up include:
- Use a different field type, such as date only, which remains constant (no adjustments), or
- Set the time zone on the web map so that the time zone used for displaying and analyzing the data is consistent across all devices.
Summary
In this article, we explored different strategies to help you level up your date and time data management in ArcGIS. You can leverage these options when choosing an approach that’s right for your data depending on your goals. Mapping and editing date and time data can be tricky, but using the right tools can make it easier.
More resources
ArcGIS Online Help has a wealth of information on working with date and time data. Be sure to join the conversation on Esri Community where you can ask questions, connect with other ArcGIS Users and share your own insights.
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