I have an app that I have shared as a template / sample. Dates and times are used in the app but I also have the Google sheets doing some important calculations with dates and times that are then fed back into the app eventually.
Until mid-September or so, when my template was copied, the Locale would be Seattle, Washington -- presumably because that is the location of AppSheet's headquarters. I thought that was kind of weird but I built my app to accommodate that. Now, however, when students in Japan copy my template, it seems that the Locale is set to Japan. That's not a minor issue because locale "affects formatting details such as functions, dates, and currency." Dates are the main problem for me. This change has broken my app for new downloads. And, fixing it is complicated -- merely changing the Locale setting back to Seattle is not enough. I had to find columns that parsed dates and times and then adjust the format settings on them -- very tedious.
Now, here are my questions:
1. I don't think this change was mentioned on "Release Notes & Announcements." I could be wrong but I searched for "Locale" there and couldn't find anything between the time when my app copied with the Seattle "Locale" and the most recent instance of in being copied as with the locale (for me, problematic) locale of "Japan." Was this significant change not announced? Is it only affecting people like me who publish templates? Might it not also affect other types of app publication?
2. I would like to fix my app to make it impervious to this kind of issue. Currently, however, when I record dates and times to my spreadsheet, I record them in this format:
10/16/2022 2:42:33
Then, I need to used Google Spreadsheet formulas to interpret this text. If the "Locale" is set to Japan at the outside, it throws all that interpretation off. Can anyone share some strategies with me for how to avoid sheet corruption caused by Locale changes? Thanks
P.S. I've looked at the Locale articles in AppSheet help but couldn't find the specific issue I'm writing about here:
https://support.google.com/appsheet/search?hl=en&q=locale&from_promoted_search=true
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