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DanayaBryant's avatar
DanayaBryant
Qrew Trainee
5 years ago

Choose Meeting Time Zone & Display Current Time Zone

My use case consists of scheduling meetings/hearings in one time zone and entering it on the form but also displaying my eastern time zone time next to the scheduled.  For example, a meeting is entered on the form for 1 pm CST in a date field but next to that display 2 pm EST so that our internal staff are aware of both times. I think my dilemma is that my application is set to EST, so I'm not sure if that means our staff would have to enter our current time zone then expect to see the other time zone displayed...I'm not sure the best approach or how to accomplish this.

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Danaya Bryant
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Formulas and functions
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  • MarkShnier__You's avatar
    MarkShnier__You
    Icon for Qrew Legend rankQrew Legend
    5 years ago
    This might be able to be done, but you would need to have a table of users where the userid is the Key field and another field in the table for the offset from Eastern which is the time zone for the app.

    Then set up a relationship between that table and the data entry table(s) based on the reference field on the right side of the relationship being [Current User] which would be a formula user field with a formula of 

    User()

    Now every record knows the local user's offset, say 2 hours for a staff member in Mountain Time Zone.

    Then you would have to decide how the data is being entered.  It most straight forward to enter it in Eastern, but if you want to enter it in local time, then you can have a field  for entry call time in local time zone,  and have a formula calculate what that is in eastern, and then have a form rule maintain the field called Eastern Time.

    So user enters into a field called [Local Time], and the form rule populates the data entry field called [Eastern Time] 


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    Mark Shnier (YQC)
    Quick Base Solution Provider
    Your Quick Base Coach
    http://QuickBaseCoach.com
    mark.shnier@gmail.com
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  • JasonJohnson2's avatar
    JasonJohnson2
    Qrew Cadet
    5 years ago
    Mark is on the right path. Do any of the workers work in an area that does not observe daylight savings time? In general Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico and Saskatchewan(that one is a headache) do not observe DST.

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    Jason Johnson
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    • DanayaBryant's avatar
      DanayaBryant
      Qrew Trainee
      5 years ago
      Jason, I wondered about that part as well because we do have clients in Arizona who don't which is why I was thinking along the lines of us entering the meeting time in as the actual time of the client's time zone and it displays to us in a separate viewing field of EST/EDT since this is where we all are internally.

      I might need further assistance in understanding what the steps are here.  So I have an existing table named Users and my key field is [User ID].  The meetings are being entered into a table named "Meetings & Hearings" within the field name [Meeting/Hearing Date & Time]. I anticipate a new field being to the right of that field as a view-only field that will convert any time entered in the [Meeting/Hearing Date & Time] field to an EST/EDT.

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      Danaya Bryant
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      • MarkShnier__You's avatar
        MarkShnier__You
        Icon for Qrew Legend rankQrew Legend
        5 years ago
        Hi Dayana,

        It's Mark
        You would have a formula which calculates the Eastern Time based on the field for the local time  plus the offset.  Then a form rule to change the Eastern to to the formula time, when the local time is not blank.
        If you need to deal with Daylight saving time, then the offset table will need to carry the date when the clock changes to be able to figure that into the calculation of Eastern Time.

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        Mark Shnier (YQC)
        Quick Base Solution Provider
        Your Quick Base Coach
        http://QuickBaseCoach.com
        mark.shnier@gmail.com
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