PPM: Date time value gets confusing when there is timezone difference
book
Article ID: 189020
calendar_today
Updated On:
Products
Clarity PPM SaaSClarity PPM On Premise
Issue/Introduction
A Mexican user has this account settings:
This Mexican user creates 3 ideas and I describe for each case the result. • The first column is the local (Mexico) date and time of the user in moment of action performed by user. • The second column is the action performed by user. • The third column is the created date for the idea as per the DB.
7th April at 10.40 a.m.
IDEA1
7th April at 17.40 p.m.
7th April at 06.13 p.m.
IDEA2
8th April at 01.13 a.m.
7th April at 06.21 p.m.
IDEA3
8th April at 01.21 a.m.
It’s easy to see the confusing situation that it represents because the user sets the date one day, and depending his time zone, Clarity can represent it 1 day later.
This is only a simple example of an idea creation, but dates are present on many items of Clarity PPM like start and finish in projects, tasks, assignments and this variation will affect the user KPI’s, reports, etc. With
Environment
Release : 15.8
Component : CLARITY PPM SAAS APPLICATION
Resolution
In PPM user account configuration there are 3 parameters: • Locale • Language • Time zone
Locale: Defines your work locale. The locale controls the number and date language formatting in the product. Language: Defines the language to use in the user interface. Time Zone: Defines the primary workplace time zone.
While Locale and Language makes sense and are very useful, one should also understand the time zone parameter and how it influences the usage scenario described in the KB.
The SAAS instance linked to the usage scenario is based out of the Munich Data center (GMT +2) and the users timezone Mexico (GMT -6). The Date time value stored in the DB records is as per server timezone. This is an expected behavior and one must consider this while making custom reports and implement the necessary date conversion functions considering the user timezone and server timezone.
Additional Information
This other KB article is for a similar use case where user timezone is set to a value that is not matching the PPM DB timezone and there is a confusion when only "Date" format is used on the UI to store date values.