Post

Changing Time Zones

by
Kerry Falk

Functionality to smoothly change time zones while retaining local times set on your calendar. Useful if you've mistakenly selected the incorrect time zone or need to switch to a time zone that no longer observes daylight savings.

Changing Time Zones

Several Canadian provinces have chosen to stop observing Daylight Savings. This has a significant effect on how scheduling functions operate for many scheduling systems, like BusyPaws.
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Within BusyPaws timestamps are saved as UTC times without offsets. They are converted to local times both when saved to the database and then when presented back to the user. This allows for changes in time zone to be reflected seamlessly among users. This presents an issue when the Time Zone the timestamp was converted from changes in structure. ie. If November 2nd at 8:00am local converts to UTC 14:00, but after change to the Time Zone no longer adjusting for Daylight Savings now converts to UTC 13:00.
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We've created a Time Zone change process which will retain your locally set times when changing from one time zone to another. This is useful if you've accidentally set the wrong time on your account, or if your province provides you with 6 weeks of notice that you won't be observing Daylight Savings!
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Stay punctual!