Time-Zone Update Utility: Solving a Real ServiceNow Pain Point at Scale

[vandanasaluja]

In today’s global work environment, users often operate across multiple regions, locations, and time zones. Maintaining accurate time-zone settings in user profiles is critical for smooth collaboration, correct task assignments, SLA tracking, approvals, notifications, and overall platform efficiency.

However, many organizations face a common challenge: ServiceNow user profiles often do not reflect the user’s actual working time zone, especially for fulfillers and end users working remotely, from different office locations, or through VDI environments.

To address this, we designed a reusable and scalable Time-Zone Update Utility in ServiceNow.

In today’s global work environment, users often operate across multiple regions, locations, and time zones. Maintaining accurate time-zone settings in user profiles is critical for smooth collaboration, correct task assignments, SLA tracking, approvals, notifications, and overall platform efficiency.

However, many organizations face a common challenge: ServiceNow user profiles often do not reflect the user’s actual working time zone, especially for fulfillers and end users working remotely, from different office locations, or through VDI environments.

To address this, we designed a reusable and scalable Time-Zone Update Utility in ServiceNow.

The Problem Statement

Business and process owners wanted a way to automatically align ServiceNow user profile time zones with the user’s actual location-specific time zone.

Traditionally, users had to raise support tickets to request time-zone corrections, creating unnecessary operational overhead for both users and support teams.

Many clients requested a more user-friendly and self-service approach where users could update their time-zone preferences without submitting tickets or depending on manual administrator intervention.

The goal was simple:

Enable users to manage their own accurate time-zone settings directly within ServiceNow.

 

Proposed Solution

We proposed a custom Time-Zone Update Utility that intelligently compares the user’s ServiceNow profile time zone with the actual time-zone offset detected from their laptop or VDI environment.

This solution is designed to be:

• Generic
• Robust
• Reusable
• Scalable across multiple clients and environments

 

Business Benefits

This solution delivers strong business value:

 

Improved User Experience

Users can update preferences instantly without raising tickets.

 

Reduced Support Overhead

Less dependency on service desk teams for profile maintenance.

 

Better SLA Accuracy

Correct time zones improve approvals, notifications, escalations, and SLA calculations.

 

Increased Data Accuracy

User profile data stays aligned with actual working conditions.

 

Reusable Enterprise Solution

The utility can be implemented across multiple business units and clients with minimal customization.

[Mark Manders]

Your first two paragraphs are duplicates.

And next to that: you tell us nothing about your solution. Only that it helps with certain things. You don't tell where it can be found, what you did or created and how it helps the community. Is it a store app, something you put on Share, are you delivering it to just your customers, is it something you just did on a PDI and is sitting there now, not being used at all? It feels like you just stopped typing and posted it without providing any information on the what. You are only telling us 'why'.

[vandanasaluja]

Thanks For Your Feedback, @Mark Manders 

It's not a store application. I have implemented this for my client, and the technical steps included are:-

1) Capture Browser Time zone

2) Create Script Include to 

• Get logged-in user timezone
• Compare timezone offset
• Return matching timezone list

3) Create Portal Widget  this displays :- 

Your profile timezone differs from your system timezone.

Suggested Timezones:
○ Asia/Kolkata
○ Asia/Colombo

4) Store Skip Preference in a custom field that store number of days

5) Scheduled Job to clear expired preference