Timestamp data requirements

Real-Time SPC requires ISO 8601 date/time formats for observations with timestamp data.

In This Topic

Acceptable formats
Time zone offsets

Acceptable formats

Specifically, Real-Time SPC uses the following ISO 8601 format:

yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ssZ

Separate the year, month, and day with dashes. Separate the hours, minutes, and seconds with colons.

All date/time information are assumed to be in UTC time. You can provide a time zone offset, such as -05:00. If you do not provide a time zone offset, then Real-Time SPC assumes the station’s time zone for the timestamp (e.g. 2025-01-01 12:00:00 would be interpreted as America/New York timezone if that is where the station is). If you do not specify date/time information, Real-Time SPC uses the current server time, also in UTC time.

Note

By default, the time zone is converted to the location of the server. Update the location of the station to represent the time zone when the data are collected. For more information, go to Add new station.

Examples of acceptable formats

For example, use any of the following to represent 8:30 in the morning on Jan 15 of the year 2025 for a station with Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) time zone.

2025-01-14 08:30:00
2025-01-14 08:30:00Z
2025-01-14T08:30:00
2025-01-14T08:30:00Z
2025-01-14T08:30:00+00:00

Note

When you use a T instead of a blank space, you must also include HH:mm. If a time entry does not have seconds, the seconds are 0.

Time zone offsets

Each station has a specified time zone. Real-Time SPC also allows you to specify the value of the UTC offset in your data collections.

Example of no timestamp provided

Suppose the current date/time is 2025-01-01T11:30:00Z (UTC), and the station has the America/Denver time zone (GMT-07:00). If you submit observations or subgroup data without a timestamp, then the timestamp is set to the current date/time.

Example of timestamp provided with a time zone offset

Suppose the current date/time is 2025-01-01T11:30:00Z (UTC), and the station has the America/Denver time zone (GMT-07:00). If you submit observations or subgroup data with a timestamp (2025-01-01T11:30:00-07:00 (America/Denver)), then the timestamp is converted to 2025-01-01T18:30:00-00:00 (UTC) and saved as 2025-01-01T18:30:00)

Example of timestamp provided without a time zone offset

Suppose the current date/time is 2025-01-01T11:30:00Z (UTC), and the station has the America/Denver time zone (GMT-07:00). If you submit observations or subgroup data with a timestamp (2025-01-01T11:30:00), then the timestamp is converted to 2025-01-01T18:30:00-00:00 (UTC) and saved as 2025-01-01T18:30:00)