Selected date displays different on item and on export

Mary Boyd
edited July 2016 in

A user has reported getting inconsistent data between Jama items and the export regarding date fields.  This is a user select date field, not a system generated date field.  I've noticed in the Activity log, it indicates date and time - time is 12:00 a.m. This user is located in Eastern Time zone; our in-house location is Central Time zone.  Could the 12 a.m. time stamp be causing confusion in the date between the 2 time zones?

I've seen some reference to BUG-485...is this the same issue?  And is there a work around while this is being resolved?  This data is used for reporting purposes and they need accurate dates reflected for metrics.

Thanks,

Mary 

Comments

  • Kristina King
    edited June 2016
    Mary, that's a great question. SOS-BUG-485 is, at this point, specific to the hosted environment. However, given the time zone differences between your user and the server, I can see why this situation could be one and the same.

    That said, there are certain activities in Jama that are logged in server time but the UI reflects client time. For example, we have activity stream show actual time (for server), but other items, such as the execution date of a test run in the UI, reflect client date/time.

    However, I'm not certain what you mean by a "user select date field"—can you advise how this field is set up in admin? Then I'll take a look into it.
  • Mary Boyd
    edited June 2016

    Hi Kristina,

    What I meant by 'user select date field' is that it is a field the user selects the date from the date picker calendar as opposed to a system generated date, such as last modified date or created date.

    Does that help?

    Mary

  • Kristina King
    edited June 2016
    Mary, yes, thanks for clarifying that it's a Custom Field called Date. I'll look into the expected behavior and we'll go from there.
  • Kristina King
    edited June 2016
    Mary, thanks for the information that you have provided. The issue you are encountering is not a bug, but the designed behavior of Jama:
    -Activity in Jama is reflected in the GUI according to the user's client time*. This includes the selection of "Today" using the date picker custom field.
    -However, actions are recorded in the database according to server time.
    -Exporting pulls from the time recorded in the database.
    *Based on feedback from many customers, we opted to display client time to the end-user everywhere except the activity stream.

    However, I can understand how this causes confusion for users or for reports. We can change this post to an Idea to reflect that you'd like to see a change in Jama's expected behavior. I know this is something our Product team is considering work on, but there is no answer to when/if that will happen. There isn't a workaround in the product, so you'd have to build in new processes so users understand where time comes into play—and that server time/activity stream time should be treated as the standard, rather than the UI. I'm sorry I don't have a solution for you.