VertiGIS Studio Reporting's date-time functions can be useful in a wide range of applications. This article aims to clarify questions around time zones when using these functions.
Where does Reporting get the date and time?
Reporting gets the date and time from the server where it is installed. If you are using the SaaS version, this would be a cloud server. If you are using an on-prem installation, this would be your own server. Because of this, if you are using on-prem Reporting, you may want to consider setting your server's time zone either to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) or to a time zone that aligns with the majority of your users.
Can Reporting detect the time displayed on your computer?
Since Reporting gets the date and time server-side, not client-side, it has no way of knowing what the time is on your computer. This means that if you generate a report from your computer, which is set to Greenwich Time, but have Reporting installed on a server that is set to Pacific Time, the date-time functions in the report will print the time in Pacific Time, not Greenwich Time.
What time zone is used in SaaS Reporting?
Our cloud servers are set to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) to make our software as accessible as possible internationally. If you would like the times to appear in your local time zone, you can use the AdjustTimeZone function, which is documented here.
How does Reporting handle Daylight Savings Time?
Daylight Savings Time is automatically accounted for if you are using a time zone that observes it. A good way to check is to open the Windows date & time settings and see whether the automatic Daylight Savings Time option appears for the given time zone.
NOTE: If you have automatic Daylight Savings Time turned off for the server where Reporting is installed, functions that get the current time (i.e. LocalDateTimeNow) will display in Standard Time, but functions that refer to the time zone (i.e. AdjustTimeZone) will still honour Daylight Savings Time. For consistency, if you live in an region that doesn't observe Daylight Savings Time, you can use a time zone that also doesn't observe Daylight Savings Time instead of turning off the automatic adjustment. For example, if you live in Saskatchewan, you would have an easier time using Central America Standard Time instead of Central Standard Time. Both are UTC-06:00, but the latter observes Daylight Savings Time, while the former doesn't.
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