Thanks Ismael, part of the direction I needed!
The function
date(${dateQuestion})
also returns the time, but when using the date picker the time is set at 00:00:00 and displays it with the date, so I tried this:
date(${obstime})
The observation time ${obstime} is filled using the time picker and returns a date and time formatted like this (below) which will be suitable for my needs for now:
Tue Jul 19 08:46:25 2016 GMT-0700
This formula for my instance name now works as follows:
concat(${observer},"-",${species},"-",date(${obstime})
However, not sure how to force the format-date function to work or if it is supported in Survey 123.
This calculation
format-date(${obstime}, '%Y/%n/%e %H:%M:%S')
currently returns
%Y/%n/%e %H:%M:%S
Joe