About time zones

Time zone information can be defined at different levels in the application.

Server time zone

At installation, the administrator specifies the time zone for the database server machine. This time zone displays on the General Parameters form. This value should not be changed by users in a cloud environment, where it is always set to UTC.

Site time zone

When you add a new site, you specify the site's time zone on the Site Management form. The site's time zone is independent of the server time zone. It displays on the Sites/Entities form and can be changed there.

Each site can have a different time zone. Most forms and reports show the time zone of the site, and audit columns such as CreateDate and RecordDate also use the site’s time zone.

During replication, as date and time values are exchanged between sites, the values are adjusted by the difference between time zones. For example, an order entered at 8:00 AM in Los Angeles would show up as having been entered at 11:00 AM when the data is copied to New York. This adjustment also occurs during APS planning.

User's time zone

When you set up a user on the Users form, you can select the local time zone to display the current time based on the user's time zone.

Caution:

The local time zone field and the associated process default should not be used with Mongoose at this time.

This field is ignored unless the DateTime in Client Time Zone process default is enabled on the Process Defaults form. If the process default is enabled and this field is blank, the value defaults to the time zone of either the local user’s machine or the web server. If you enable the process default, we recommend that this value be specified for each user and not be left blank.

Specifying information about time zones

You can set up new time zones or modify the information about existing time zones on the Time Zone Data form.