Time zone lookup - Code, American code and time zone offset columns
Hello community,
I have a few questions reg the out of the box time zones lookup. I looked up the Creatio academy and it does not have answers to my questions.
1. Is the column 'American code' used anywhere? If Yes, why is it blank in the out-of-the-box time zone look up? What is this column meant for?
2. Is the time zone offset column used anywhere? I tried the following -
Using data import, I changed the offset value of Alaska to 'GMT+5.30'. I then went to a system user contact whose time zone is set to Alaska. I still see the time as per Alaska and not as per GMT+5.30. From where does Creatio retrieve offset values to show local time in a contact's time zone?
3. Similar to #2, I renamed the 'Code' column for Alaska to Gibberish. Now the System does not show any local time in the contact profile.
I infer that, Creatio reads the 'Code' value and fetches the offset from Windows server settings? Can you also confirm that Creatio does not use the 'Offset' column given in the lookup?
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Hello Shrikanth,
Hope you're doing well.
The time which is displayed in the system is based on the server time + value of the user profile offset column. If you are using the OOB columns, you need to check the server time by running the next query:
SELECT GETUTCDATE()
The result of this query will show the current UTC server time. After that, you can compare these data with your user's time zones settings.
As I can understand, you have changed the "Code" and "Time zone offset" column via DB, as far as the lookup "Time zones" is a system lookup that is locked for editing (except of the "Name" column). Blocked values are needed for login in the system. After editing or adding a new value users with this time zone sometimes can have troubles with the login process, so this is why those columns are locked. Also, need to pay attention to the address of the contact, because the city/state can have the time zone which is different from the default time zone for that country.
Best regards,
Roman
Roman Rak,
Hi Roman. Thanks for your response. Yes, I did check the address' city/state and ensured that they are valid for my use case.
#2 - I changed the offset column value and still no change happened (I logged out/logged in, refreshed page, cleared Redis cache etc).
I even changed the offset to 'UTC+5:30', It still showed Alaska time. This is noteworthy because, all the default offsets are in GMT. I changed it to UTC and expected the system to break. It didn't. It still showed me Alaska time. This makes me doubt if this column is being used at all.
#1 - What about 'American code' column?
Hello Shrikanth,
Thank you for your questions.
About the 'American code' column: at the moment this column is out of use and doesn't affect any functionality. If you want us to delete this column (or add/edit any other system columns/settings/values), please inform the Creatio support team.
At the moment there is no possibility to change the records for 'Time zone offset' and 'Code' columns via standard system tools because they are related to system settings and have unique values in the DB. Also during the populating the "Time zones" lookup developers added all actual timezones at the moment. We really appreciate your idea and have created the feature request for providing the possibility of adding/changing "Time zones" lookup records in the future releases of the Creatio application.
Best regards,
Roman