Dealing with Time Zones

Iotellect is a distributed system. In a large Iotellect installation, different components may be deployed in several countries or even on several continents. Thus, Iotellect Server, users, and Devices may be located in different time zones. You have to configure time zones properly when setting up the system. Once you do that, timestamps will be automatically displayed in proper time zones during system operation.

Here is a list of principles used by Iotellect when operating in multiple time zones:

Server Time Zone

  • Iotellect assumes the server is located in the Server Time Zone specified in the Global Configuration Settings.

  • Server Time Zone is used to convert timestamps to/from strings and process them using the expression language if a specific time zone was provided for an operation.

  • The time zone defined in the operating system running Iotellect Server is used only once: to set a default time zone for Iotellect Server. After that, only the time zone defined in the server settings is used.

Internal Storage and Transfer

  • Internally, Iotellect Server stores all date/time values in UTC (Coordinated Universal Time).

  • All timestamps serialized and transferred via Iotellect Protocol are encoded/decoded into strings using the UTC time zone.

User and Device Time Zones

  • The Time Zone for every user is defined in the user account settings.

  • The Time Zone for every Device is defined in the Device account settings.

  • If a user's time zone is set to Not Selected, the user is assumed to be located in the server's time zone. By default, the time zone for new users is Not Selected.

  • If a device's time zone is set to Not Selected, the device is assumed to be located in the server's time zone. By default, the time zone for new Devices is Not Selected.

Timestamp Displaying and Editing

  • All Web UI or Iotellect Client visual components render Date/Time fields according to the active user's time zone unless a specific time zone is set in a component’s settings (component-level time zone selection has the highest priority).

  • If the user's time zone is set to Not Selected, timestamps are shown using the Server Time Zone.

  • In certain cases timestamps can be displayed using different time zones, in this case the time zone used for timestamp rendering is shown explicitly.

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