Upcoming mobile behavior change to TimeData questions

Hi all,

This is an announcement relating to an upcoming change in the underlying platform behavior for CommCare Mobile and Web Apps relating to the "Time" entry question (Distinct from the Date Entry or DateTime entry questions, which are unaffected).

For some time now, the "Serialized" output of a TimeData question has unintentionally included Time Zone offset data as part of the String representation of a time, such as

02:30:00.000-05

Time Zone offset information was never intended to be represented by these questions, since Time Zone offsets depend on both location and date. TimeData questions have always been intended to represent "Wall Clock" time rather than a specific instance in time.

In an upcoming release (likely 2.51.0) and very soon on Web Apps we will be changing the serialized representation of dates to exclude timezone offset information, producing an output like:

02:30:00.000

Although we don't believe anyone will be affected by this change, we wanted to make sure the community was aware early in the event that apps are making assumptions about the length or structure of these values.

-Clayton