Configuring time zones

The Time zones application allows you to configure time zones that will be available in the system. You can set time zones for the following:

  • particular users
  • particular sites
  • physical location of the server

This can be useful if your site has an international audience and you want the date and time displayed on your site to be correct for users from across the world.

To use time zones, enable it in the settings:

  1. Open the Settings application.
  2. Navigate to Settings -> System.
  3. In the Time Zones section, select the Enable time zones checkbox.
    Time zones in the Settings application
  4. Click Save.

Time zones are currently supported in:

  • Pages, My desk, and Events applications
  • Web parts of the Blogs, Forums, Message boards, Messaging and Smart search applications

Usage examples

A typical example of use is displaying the time of forum posts when you have a global community – while the server may be located in New York (UTC-05:00), visitors coming from Paris (UTC+01:00) may see their new posts were added at 8am, while they would expect to see 2pm according to their current time.

Another example is a website of a global company that runs on a server in New York, but contains content for a French office. In this case, French visitors may wonder why the current time displayed by the server is 8am while it’s 2pm in Paris. That’s when you use the built-in support for multiple time zones.

Day and time in the Pages application

User time zone

  • User Andy sets the Publish from value of a page to 3/14/2016 3:14:15 PM. His user time zone is set to UTC+00:00 (London).

Day and time value relative to London time zone

  • User Claire visits the page and sees that the Publish from value is 3/14/2016 11:14:15 AM because her user time zone is set to UTC-05:00 (New York).

Day and time value relative to New York time zone

Site time zone

  • If a user has no time zone specified, the day and time values are relative to the Site time zone. In this example, the site time zone is set to UTC+01:00 (Paris).

Day and time value relative to Paris time zone

Server time zone

  • If neither user time zone nor Site time zone are specified, the Server time zone is used.

Time zones in web parts

Web parts of the Blogs, Forums, Message boards, Messaging and Smart Search applications have the Time zones section in their web part properties, where you can set the applied time zone. The section contains the following two properties:

Time zone

Specifies the type of time zone that the web part uses for its content. The following types are available:

  • Inherit - inherits the time zone settings from the Page placeholder web part that displays the page template containing the web part (only applies to nested pages).
  • Server - uses the Server time zone settings.
  • Website - uses the Site time zone settings.
  • User - uses the time zone settings of individual users.
  • Custom - uses the time zone selected in the Custom time zone property.

Custom time zone

Assigns a custom time zone specifically for the content of the web part. The web part uses the selected time zone regardless of the time zone settings of the website or user viewing the page.

In the case of the Calendar and Event calendar web parts, these web part properties take no effect. Instead, you have to ensure the displaying of the correct time zone in the used transformation, as described in Displaying correct time in your code.

Setting time zones for users

Each user can have their own time zone settings:

  1. Open the Users application.
  2. Edit () a user.
  3. On the Settings tab, select a time zone from the Time zone drop-down list.
  4. Click Save.

Where applicable, these time zone settings are used instead of the Site time zone.

Users can also select their time zone on the live site, if you place the My Account or My Profile web part on one of your pages. If they have access to the administration interface, they can select their time zones in the My profile application using the Time zone drop-down list.

Users can select a time zone using the My profile web part