I am using a saved search that pulls in data from an external source with it's own time format. I've converted the format to match what I see when I output _time, and eval'd _time to be that converted value, but it doesn't seem to be getting recognized, because whenever the data comes in and I search on it, all the data just gets put to the beginning of today. Is there an extra step I'm missing in order to get _time to be overridden with my own values?
You need to convert your custom date string to epoch and assign to field _time in the events. We may be more helpful if you could provide your current search, some sample values etc.
Ahh that was my issue, I was using strftime after strptime to format it how I see _time when I output it through the UI, but I should have just been keeping it in epoch format. Thank you somesoni2 !