Buzz: Questions & Answers

DateTime Special Codes

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Michael Denton

Where are the special codes for DateTimes documented? For example T12:00:00.0Z would match noon in any time zone while adding one tenth of a second, T12:00:00.1Z, would match the local time zone relative to noon in UTC.

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Brian Williams
  • Agilix team member

Hi Michael!

I am providing you with a link to our API document Item Data which contains the attribute "attributedata . duedate" which goes into more detail on this function you mentioned. 

Is there anything more I can do for you? 

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Michael Denton

Thank you, Brian. I knew it was out there somewhere but, didn't see it under Item Data earlier today.The T23:59:00.0Z was my guess but, wanted to confirm.

Correct me if I'm wrong but, I thought there were three categories. Was I wrong in my presumption above that you can specify Noon or 5:00PM in the local time zone?

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Michael Denton

FYI - The course cards are not providing the proper math for end time. Enrollment 123040725 ends at 2019-12-19T23:59:00Z but, the course card displays the time zone adjusted time.

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Brian Williams
  • Agilix team member

You can specify a specific time in UTC through the API. However, the course card time is taking into account the change in daylight savings ending in November. The enrollment end-date overlaps that event. 

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Michael Denton

The issue is that time zones and DST (which is time zone specific) should not be a factor in this specific case. GetEnrollment3 shows "enddate":"2019-12-19T23:59:00Z". That means it is supposed to be 11:59 PM, regardless of time zone. The Course Card should reflect that too.

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Brad Marshall
  • Agilix team member

Hey Michael, the end of day datetime feature is only for activity due dates, not enrollment or course start/end dates.

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Michael Denton

Well, put me on a list of those who think that is silly. ;-)

 

The problem here started with students not realizing that the course ended first thing in the morning on the end date. (aka: 12:00 am) Teachers started adding an arbitrary extra day to the end date and the integration programmers added another arbitrary day to the end date. Now, ending at 3:59 pm EST seems even more arbitrary. Granted, we used to used Brainhoney here, which never showed the time of day. Now that it's on the course card, there is a whole new dynamic. It would technically create a gap where the final exam is not due until after the enrollment ends and therefore, prevents the student from taking the final.

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Jason Albertson

Setting due dates to student time zones sounds like a pretty sweet feature. Is this something that could be added as a domain-level switch? Even if it was just available at the assignment level via the UI (instead of API), that would be fantastic.

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