SurveyToGo: The Different Time Fields Captured with SurveyToGo

Reference for the different time fields captured per interview—covers Timestamp, VisitStart, VisitEnd, Duration, NetDuration, and their clock sources.

Aug 19, 2026
Knowledge

Title

Answer

The Different Time Fields Captured with SurveyToGo

Overview

SurveyToGo: captures many time values for interviews. All correspond to different events and based on different clocks. The reason for collecting the different time values is to give you the ability to gain full visibility to what happened and when.

The following times are collected for each interview:

Name	Description	Based on which clock	Can it be changed?	Comments
Timestamp	Captured upon starting the interview	Device	No
SubmitTime	Captured upon completing the interview	Device	No
VisitStart	Captured upon starting the interview	Device	Yes	If no changes were made it is equal to TimeStamp field
VisitEnd	Captured upon completing the interview	Device	Yes	If no changes were made it is equal to SubmitTime field
UploadTime	Captured when the interview hits the server	Server	No
ReviewTime	Captured when the interview status is changed to “Approved” or “Cancelled”.	Server	No
NetDuration	The actual time spent interviewing regardless of the device clock	None	No
IdleTime	The total Inactivity time of an interview.	None	No

When exporting the interviews, you can export all the various time fields. By default the following column names are:

Column Name	Maps to which time field?
Date	TimeStamp
Duration	SubmitTime minus TimeStamp
NetDuration/ClientDuration	Actual time spent interviewing regardless of the device clock
VStart	VisitStart
VEnd	VisitEnd
Upload	UploadTime
RvwTime	ReviewTime

Note 1

The Net duration will tell you how much time the interview was actually happening. It is calculated on the device as the time the survey was actually active (i.e. the app was on in the foreground and the interview was actually displayed/conducted).

The total duration is a simple calculation between the end time and start time of the interview.

So for example if the interview started this morning at 8:00, stopped at 9:00 then continued at 11:00 to then get terminated at 13:00 the total duration would be 5 hours while the net would be 3 hours. Same is if the app was brought to the background so in the above example let’s say that at 9:00 the surveyor pressed the device home button (meaning the app is still running but is at the background), then browsed the internet or played a game for 2 hours then brought the app back to the foreground to complete the interview it would show 5 as total but 3 as Net.

Note 2

Please note, that your devices (Android\PC) must have their Time Zones and clock' configured correctly in order to prevent mistakes in the various time calculations.

Note 3

Please note that you can choose which timezone to see the interview data in the operations console for each interview.

Open the subject and on the top right corner choose the timezone, either the your timezone or the interview timezone.

When using 'My Timezone' it will show you the different times captured according to the PCs timezone, for example: If you open the Operations Console in Italy which is at GMT+1 you would see:
VisitEnd would show 20:00 (14:00 + 6 as 6 is the time diff between Italy and GMT-5)
UploadTime would show 21:00 (20:00 + 1 as 1 is the time diff between Italy and GMT)

If by any chance you didn't set your tablet in Panama correctly and, for example, just adjusted the clock but didn't set the time zone this is what will happen:

The Interview ended at 14:00 (2PM). But with this 'wrong' setting we will keep the SubmitTime and VisitEnd as 14:00 GMT (and not GMT-5).
Lets assume again that at 15:00 again Panama time the sync (upload) is performed and lets assume it is uploaded to a server farm located in UK which is on GMT. We would record 20:00 GMT (the time on the server at that time)

If you open the Operations Console in Italy which is at GMT+1 you would see:
VisitEnd would show 15:00 (14:00 + 1 as 1 is the time diff between Italy and GMT as was tracked this time)
UploadTime would show 21:00 (20:00 + 1 as 1 is the time diff between Italy and UK)

Depending on the time zone of the device and servers and with wrong time zone settings on the device you can understand how an upload time can be 'earlier' visible than the end time of the survey on the operations console.

URL Name

SurveyToGo-The-Different-Time-Fields-Captured-with-SurveyToGo