Time zone example using NOW() and NOWDATE()

As part of the effort to move Infor Birst to Amazon Web Services (AWS), Birst is adopting the Infor standard that establishes the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) time standard as the standard time across all cloud applications.

For those sites migrated post the 2023.08 maintenance window, this change impacts our customers, specifically those customers using date values for data processing logic, filters, reports, variables and so on (such as NOW(), NOWDATE(), and LOADCOMPLETIONTIME()) whether utilizing Live Access or ADR spaces.

As part of this change, the time zone for customer spaces will be updated from the current time zone to UTC as part of the Infor standardization. This shift has the potential to impact not only data processing, but also, scripts, reports, variables and other objects which may use the above-mentioned date variables.

For example, if you space Processing Time Zone is set to Local Server Time (default setting) and you are in the United States, then your time zone would be Central Standard Time (CST) prior to the AWS migration. Post site migration, the default time zone is moved to UTC, and the space time zone shifts 5 hours ahead from the previous setting of CST to UTC. Similar shifts can be seen when site migrations occur for those sites in Europe and Asia Pacific regions.

Here is an example of NOW() and NOWDATE(), using Server Local Time (default) as the Processing Time Zone of a customer in the Eastern Time Zone (EST):

Date: 7/28/2023 @ 9:00 PM

Browser Time Zone:EST (@9:00 PM)

This is caused by the day change for UTC (12am) at 8PM EST. This will impact the use of NOW(), NOWDATE(), or NOWDATETIME() in displaying report dates, filtering date, and so on.

See KB Article 2303325 for more information on the time zone change made in 2023.10.