Time Zones
During the initial installation, you must establish the default time zone for Archer. This time zone becomes the default time zone for all instances and users unless you override it. You can override the default time zone in any instance (in the Archer Control Panel) or for any user (in the User Profile of Archer).
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Time zone configuration
Archer stores the default time zone as Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Archer uses this time standard for converting time and dates based on the instance or user locale. All time is stored as UTC and converted based on the time zone of the user.
Each user account has a time zone associated with it. Archer uses this time zone to standardize dates and times users enter. When a date field includes the time component, it uses the time zone to store the date and time in the database as UTC and displays it to other users based on the time zone associated with the User Profile of the other user.
All values for date fields entered in Archer reside in the database as UTC. However, the Display Control type determines how Archer handles time.
- For Date only, Archer truncates the time.
- For Date and Time, Archer converts the time based on the time zone associated with the user profile.
Example: Date only
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Scenario |
User 1 is in time zone (UTC-6:00) Central Time (US & Canada). User 2 is in time zone (UTC+5:30) Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi. |
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Action |
User 1 enters the date 11/14/2017 in record A. The date is stored in the database as 11/14/2017 00:00:00 UTC. |
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Result |
User 2 accesses record A and sees 11/14/2017 as the date. Because the field is Date only, the time is truncated and is shown to the user as the date stored without time. |
Example 2: Date and time
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Scenario |
User 1 is in time zone (UTC-6:00) Central Time (US & Canada). User 2 is in time zone (UTC+5:30) Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi. |
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Action |
User 1 enters the date 11/14/2017 and the time 10:13 P.M. in record A. The date and time are converted based on the time zone of user 1. As a result the date and time are stored in the database as 11/15/2017 04:13:00 UTC. |
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Result |
User 2 accesses record A and sees 11/15/2017 9:43:00 A.M. Because the field is Date and Time, the date and time are converted from UTC to the time zone of user 2. |
Data feeds and calculated fields use UTC. Consider a calculated field with the DATEFORMAT function with Example 2, Archer displays the date and time as 8/15/2012 04:13:00 UTC for all users regardless of their time zone. A text field stores the date and time. When the date and time are stored in a text field, the data is not converted because Archer recognizes the date as text only.
The DATEFORMAT(NOW(),"yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm tt") function displays the current date and time in UTC in the format you want. If you want to store it in a Date Field with time enabled, convert the literal to a date time serial value.
DATETIMEVALUE(DATEFORMAT(NOW(),”yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm tt”)) displays the current date and time converted from UTC to the current time zone of the user because a Date fields displays the data with time enabled.
A time zone is required when creating schedules to run processes like data feeds and scheduled recalculations. If the time zone is not specified, the default time zone for the instance is used. This time zone is set up in Archer Control Panel during the initial installation. Configuration information can be found in the Archer Control Panel Help.
