Member's DST does not match settings on calendars

[russellhltn]

The home computer's honestly shouldn't have anything to do with it. The database should abide by the location Time Zone settings.

I wish that were the case. But we've had a number of complaints when the scheduler goes traveling that they find all their times are "off". The calendar does indeed get it's time zone settings from the viewer's computer.

[dmwilhelm]

OK, now I see an event I did not schedule was back an hour. I think the November Bug may be an issue after all. Any news on when a patch might come through? BTW: My sister's account was back to normal accept for the above mentioned change. Perhaps it fixed itself? If so its a data issue.

[schaeffer]

I set up a calendar and sync's it with my google calendar, but the times did not match they are an hour off. How do I fix it?

[mevans]

I don't know what programming library the church programmers are using for dealing with time zones. I was recently looking at a few and I remember noticing that one of them had Arizona in Mountain Standard Time, which surprised me (I didn't look in enough detail to see if there was special data for cities in Arizona). Other programming libraries give Arizona its own time zone.

Is this an issue affecting everyone in Arizona? There are a lot of church units there and I'd think we'd be hearing a lot more about it if it affected all Arizona units.

[russellhltn]

I was recently looking at a few and I remember noticing that one of them had Arizona in Mountain Standard Time, which surprised me

If it's MST all the time, that would work. If they put it in MT (which switches between MST and MDT), or put it in MST and turn on daylight savings, then there would be a problem.

But it does raise a question - is there a pattern to the computers where the problem is visible? Is the problem confined to a type of Windows, Mac, iOS, Android?

Or maybe only mobile devices? I noticed that my smart phone (Android) is set to get it's time and time zone information automatically from the cell tower. That raises the question of a cell carrier sending erroneous information about a future time change.

I can't say as I've seen Windows change it's time zone settings automatically. It's always been a manual operation for me. But you never know if there might be domain settings on work machines coming into play.

Then again, just what kind of information can the programmers get from one's computer via a web page?

[russellhltn]

Just for kicks and grins, paste your sync URL into a browser and dig though the resulting iCal file. The church server tracks everything in UTC, but the display is adjusted for your local time zone. But the iCal dumps everything in UTC (leaving your device to apply the TZ correction).

That should settle what is scheduled correctly and what is a display issue.

[russellhltn]

Then again, just what kind of information can the programmers get from one's computer via a web page?

Ask and ye shall receive. In Chrome, Tools > Developer Tools (or just press Ctrl - Shift - I).

Log into the calendar. Scroll thought the lower windows until you see a time zone (something like America.Denver). It will be just above
/church-calendar/services/lucrs/mem/currentUserOptions

That's the time zone being used to calculate the calendar display.

And as I suspected, things get messy when devices attached to cell towers are involved, as they tend to get the time zone information automatically. (but radio waves doesn't respect time zone lines.)

[russellhltn]

I think I found an easier way. People having problems might want to go to http://pellepim.bitbucket.org/jstz/ to see what time zone the browser is reporting. There's no guarantee that lds.org it's using the same code(and getting the same results), but it should be a good start to see if someone's settings are off.

[dmwilhelm]

Thank you all for your help. We'll apply all the advice you gave us and wait for a fix.

[jeffevannelson]

This is actually something that is a problem. we have had this happen a few times were some ones machine is set to a different time. For example you have a clerk who is on a business trip in New York. but he lives in California. If his computer changes time zones because its "smart" what happens is he creates a event and that event is tied to eastern time zone. at which point he keeps setting the time correctly when he gets home but its always "2 hours early"

We are currently working on a way to change event time zones via the GUI for users So they can fix there own issues. Just FYI