Last month’s Micro survey was all about what the user interface of your Checkmk site looks like. We learned a lot, for example that 84% of you use the dark theme. Check out the results.
I really like these polls but this one makes no sense at all.
Whatever time format and time-zone I prefer is not relevant, we work in a global environment where time format should work not be pushed on you. Instead let the browser tell you what timezone and format your user have selected in his/her OS, and use the same, just like Grafana have been doing for years.
We push really hard to use UTC everywhere, all our servers follows UTC time, and when working with Grafana this is a breeze.
With the improvements to the “Schedule downtime” dialog, we are currently investigating the possibility of browser-detected time/date formats. With this survey, we also want to research sensible defaults for places where it is not as easy to go with a browser-detected format.
In summary, we agree with you: we want to include browser defaults as much as possible, but we need to be prepared for the cases where it doesn’t work.
Time zones are another very important issue. It is not part of the Micro survey, but we are looking into it as well (also in the context of the “Schedule Downtime” improvements). I would like to know more about the problems and frustrations you have with the current time zone handling, as it would help us to prioritize better. So if you are up for a quick chat, drop me a short direct message with your email
The 7th Micro Survey is now closed. We appreciate everyone who took the time to share their thoughts and insights on the use of Checkmk. Thank you for your valuable input and stay tuned for updates on our progress!
Better late than never. The results of the 7th Micro Survey are in. In this survey we looked at date and time formats. The reason: We received a support ticket about the display of the date in the ‘Details’ section of a check, which was displayed as “Mar 20 2023” and was not perceived as helpful when trying to get a quick overview.
We had an idea of what we liked, but we wanted to make sure the new date format worked for you aswell! So we ran a Micro survey.
We found out:
YYYY-MM-DD is the preferred date format because it’s easy to sort and follows the ISO8601 standard.
Although we have a strong survey bias towards European users (98%), interpreting a date such as 06/05/2023 without further context is not as easy for participants as expected and prone to misinterpretation.
As expected, European-based participants prefer the 24-hour time format to the AM/PM format.
That’s why we will change the date format of the in the ‘Details’ section of the Check to YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS. We are also investigating how and where to incorporate system/browser settings adaptation for date and time formats for a consistent user experience.
Thank you all for your participation and feedback!