Site timezones

The proper selection of site timezone is critical for supporting data collection workflows and certain logic built into device configurations, reports, and dashboard components that rely on the site setting.

ClinSpark offers timezone options based on what is built into the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). The JVM however supports a wide selection of ‘deprecated’ timezones for compatibility reasons, but not all are appropriate for use. A majority of the selections of the JVM are built around this pattern:

• Abbreviation-based identifiers (GMT, AST, UTC)

• Administrative zones and GMT offsets (Etc/UTC, Etc/GMT+6)

• Country/StateOrRegion (US/Pacific, Cuba)

• Area/Locality (America/New_York, Europe/London)

• Area/Region/Locality (America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires, America/Indiana/Knox)

Whenever possible, the most accurate and appropriate selection of timezone follows the pattern of Area/Region/Locality or Area/Locality. This ensures that the most regionally accurate timezone is selected in order to properly observe timezone rules (such as daylight savings) in that physical area.

Selections of Country/StateorRegion, or, abbreviation based identifiers such as GMT offsets is typically less accurate and generally not recommended. Selection of GMT offsets do not properly observe regional requirements for daylight savings time. Additionally, certain Country/StateorRegion selections are less accurate than Area/Locality, because countries and state regions span multiple physical cities and areas that can observe different rules for daylight savings time.

It’s therefore important to search the timezone list for a selection of the proper locality for a given site, or, the locality that matches the closest city.

As an example, let's consider a site located in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico observes Atlantic Standard Time (AST). AST however spans multiple regions where only some locations observe daylight savings time. However, Puerto Rico does not observe daylight savings. While it would seem appropriate to select the AST timezone based upon what most documented sources would suggest, in practice, it is best to select America/Puerto_Rico as the timezone to ensure the correct observance of daylight savings.

Other notes

On the ClinSpark development roadmap is an initiative to improve the selection of timezones for site configurations to avoid setup challenges. If customers have questions (or comments) about timezone setup they are encouraged to reach out via service desk ticket to discuss.