Date and time in WATS

Intro

Many WATS customers receive data from multiple time zones. They also have users that login to the web apps and mobile app from different time zones to submit and analyze data. Synchronizing, analyzing and presenting data from all 24 (one hour) time zones to all different users is a complex exercise.

In WATS, we are dealing with 3 main date/time types (in addition to the time zones):

• UTC date/time. May be time log in web apps (for instance change log) or report origin UTC
• date/time. Refers to report origin (UUT/UUR) local time (typically the test station local time settings)
• Local date/time. The login Users local time (typically PC or browser time setting) 

Date and time references can be found all places in WATS, like login user actions or incoming test report date/time info. 

When date and time is displayed in WATS a label should describe what "kind" it is referring to.

Example - Test reports

As example, in Test reports you may find 3 Start date/time columns.

• UTC Start date/time. Report origin UTC
• Start date/time. Report origin Local time (from test station)
• Local Start date/time. Login Users local time

 NOTE: UTC Start date/time and Start date/time is collected from the UUT report logged to WATS. If these dates are wrong (for instance it is the same time), you must fix the incoming report itself from the data source.

When you search for data, you may search using UTC date/time or Local date/time. The matching result will then match based on the proper "column" (data set).

Date picker

Using the date picker, you may select whether to use UTC or Local time when querying data.

Your local time settings may be edited in My settings.

Things to be aware of

• Look at the same data! If you share or compare statistics, print screens or exports from WATS, make sure you look at the same date and time. As example, looking at periodic yield with UTC or Local time may give very different results
• Triggers and alarms use UTC. Time and period-based triggers (e.g. yield dropped x per day) is calculated based on UTC time.
• In WATS we look at data per hour, day, week etc. in aggregated view. A report created 23:00 UTC falls into the same day globally, but using Local time, it may be included in the next day instead
• In general, only reporting support local time. All timestamps in Control panel etc. is based on UTC.
• Global dashboards that is set up with Local time will filter data based on the login users local time settings