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Date Timezones

The following are common timezones. For a complete list, see the TZ database name column in this Wikipedia article.

American Timezones​

  • America/New_York (Eastern Time, UTC-5/4)
  • America/Chicago (Central Time, UTC-6/5)
  • America/Denver (Mountain Time, UTC-7/6)
  • America/Los_Angeles (Pacific Time, UTC-8/7)
  • UTC-7 (Mountain Time with no daylight saving time, i.e. Arizona)

A Note about Autotask Dates​

When exposing dates in the Autotask SOAP API, Autotask presents and accepts all dates using the America/New_York timezone globally, no matter what database zone hosts your Autotask instance. Autotask converts the date and time to your timezone when Autotask displays the time in the browser, but all times exposed in the API are presented in the America/New_York timezone. The time exposed in the API changes with Daylight Saving Time changes, as well. If you query Autotask at midnight (US Eastern Time) on the first day of Daylight Saving Time, the times returned will be different than if you query that same object 3 hours later, after Daylight Saving Time has began.

In order to assist in conversion to and from Autotask's database, we support a special timezone we call Autotask. You can use this timezone when using the {{date}} text replacement helper. The special Autotask timezone correctly accounts for Daylight Saving Time and for the timezone difference for US Eastern Time.

For example, after retrieving a Time Entry from the Autotask API, use either of the following to display the start time of the Time Entry in the UTC timezone (the UTC timezone is used by default if no timezone is specified):

{{date custom.TimeEntry.StartDateTime from_tz="Autotask"}}
{{date custom.TimeEntry.StartDateTime from_tz="Autotask" to_tz="UTC"}}

The start time of that same Time Entry can be displayed in the Los Angeles timezone:

{{date custom.TimeEntry.StartDateTime from_tz="Autotask" to_tz="America/Los_Angeles"}}

In the same way, if sending a modified start time back to the Autotask API, you will need to convert the time from your own timezone to the Autotask timezone:

{{date custom.NewStartTime from_tz="America/Los_Angeles" to_tz="Autotask"}}

To set the Time Entry start date to now, you always need to specify to_tz="Autotask". Internally, Email2AT will create a new date/time object with the current date and time in UTC, and will convert it to the Autotask timezone prior to rendering the text.

If you do not specify that you want your date rendered to the Autotask timezone, the current date/time in the UTC timezone will be stored in the Autotask database, but Autotask will think the date/time is for the America/New_York timezone. When the time is displayed in the Autotask web interface, it will be off by several hours (how many hours will depend on the difference in time between your own timezone and America/New_York).

When storing the current date/time in Autotask, always convert using to_tz="Autotask":

{{date to_tz="Autotask"}}

If providing a specific date/time to Autotask, always specify the timezone of the date you're submitting using from_tz="America/Los_Angeles" (replace America/Los_Angeles with the correct timezone) and the destination timezone using to_tz="Autotask":

{{date custom.NewStartTime from_tz="America/Los_Angeles" to_tz="Autotask"}}

or:

{{date '2019-04-05 01:22:37' from_tz="America/Los_Angeles" to_tz="Autotask"}}