"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once."
Albert Einstein
Einstein's statement certainly sounds correct, but if your organization has offices in different time zones, you may feel that everything IS happening at once. Business is taking place 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and in 24 time zones around the globe. How can you manage people and actions in different locations efficiently? In ServiceNow, there is a lot that you can do with time zones:
- set the system time zone
- set user time zones
- consider daylight savings time
- try the Time Zone Changer
- do some advanced work in GlideDateTime
The system time zone can be set by navigating to System Properties > System and editing the System timezone, used as default for calendars and users property. The new time zone you specify is automatically associated with all users who do not have a time zone identified in their profile.
After a system time zone is set, individual users can set a time zone for themselves by navigating to Self-Service > My Profile. A system administrator can set or change the time zone for any user. It is important to note that the user is assigned the selected time zone and no longer uses the system time zone. The time zone set on the user record takes precedence over the system time zone.
Daylight savings time can present challenges. To have the system automatically change for daylight savings time, set the time zone based on a location (for example, Europe/Dublin). The time zone does adjust if it is set based on time zone name (for example, GMT).
In the Harry Potter book named The Prisoner of Azkaban, Hermione Granger uses a nifty device called a Time-Turner to travel through time. Nearly as magical, the ServiceNow Time Zone Changer enables users to change their time zone temporarily with a simple drop-down menu. The Time Zone Changer is especially useful for customer support agents helping users in other time zones and for users that travel to different time zones frequently.
To do some time zone fine-tuning, use the methods in the GlideDateTime class. For example, set the time zone format and determine how information about the day of the week or month is obtained.
For more information about time zones in ServiceNow, see the following:
Introduction to Time-Related Functionality (product documentation)
Using Time Zones (product documentation)
Time zone discussions (ServiceNow community)
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