Why might the Open Date of Incidents in the Export results not match the Open Date as viewed via the web interface?

Products

• SUPPORT AUTOMATION- SERVER
• CA Service Desk Manager - Unified Self Service
• CA Service Desk Manager
• CA Service Management - Asset Portfolio Management
• CA Service Management - Service Desk Manager

Issue/Introduction

You may notice that the timestamp in date values for exported incidents does not match the timestamp that is displayed when you view the incident from the CA SDM web browser interface.

This document explains why this may occur.

This document refers to a sample scenario in which:

1. The CA Service Desk Manager (CA SDM) primary server is installed on a Windows machine for which the time zone is "(UTC+05:30) Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi".

2. The CA SDM web interface is accessed from a web browser on the CA SDM primary server.

3. The CA SDM web interface is accessed from a web browser running on a remote machine for which the time zone is "(UTC) Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London". 

Why may the value in the date fields of the Incidents that are included in the MS Excel spreadsheet that contains the results of exporting the Incident List via the Export button of the CA SDM web interface, have a different value than the value displayed in the corresponding field when viewed from the CA SDM web interface?

For example, the following screenshot shows the Open Date of an Incident as viewed via the CA SDM web interface as "06/05/2017 04:19 pm" (Note: The timestamp format is configured as mm/dd/yyyy; the local timezone of the machine running the web browser is UTC) :

<Please see attached file for image>

However, the date as shown in the screenshot of the export results shows the Open Date of that Incident as "05/06/2017 20:49" (Note: The timestamp format is configured as dd/mm/yyyy):

<Please see attached file for image>

Why doesn't the Export data show "05/06/2017 04:19 pm"?

Why does the Export data show "+5:30" when the mouse hovers over the value of the Open Date?

Environment

Screenshots taken from CA Service Desk Manager 12.9 Cumulative patch #1 running on Windows.

Resolution

While exporting the data, the time stamps are taken from the database, which is in Unix time stamp format and based on the time zone of the server.  Whereas, while displaying the date on the web interface, the date is converted to the timezone of the time zone of the logged-in user.

In this example, the dates as shown from the server's local web interface and Export results are as follows:

This screenshot shows the Open Date of an Incident as viewed via the CA SDM web interface as "06/05/2017 08:49 pm" (Note: The timestamp format is configured as mm/dd/yyyy; the local timezone of the machine running the web browser is UTC+5.30) :

<Please see attached file for image>

src="/servlet/servlet.FileDownload?file=0150c000004AKggAAG" alt="CASDMServerWebBrowserTimezoneIsIST.png" width="1033" height="470">

This screenshot shows the date the Open Date of that Incident as "05/06/2017 20:49" (Note: The timestamp format is configured as dd/mm/yyyy; And "20:49" is the 24-hour-clock equivalent of "08:49 pm"; the timestamps are equivalent):

<Please see attached file for image>

src="/servlet/servlet.FileDownload?file=0150c000004AKgfAAG" alt="CASDMServerWebBrowserExportTimezoneIsIST.png" width="1037" height="423">