Time zone for the UK and Portugal missing?

Erik_Ferm · 01-12-2022 12:35 AM

This is not a terribly big deal but I noticed that the time zones that come closest for the UK and Portugal are

UTC
GMT Standard time
Greenwich Standard time

I have no idea what the difference between GMT standard time and Greenwich Standard time might be but i suspect all three are the same.

So if I wanted to set a bot to do something at a certain time all-year round, there doesn’t seem to be a time zone that would take summer time into account so the event would trigger one hour later or earlier depending on the time of the year.

This applies to the UK and Portugal as far as I can see. For the rest of Europe, there are time zones that would include the adjustment for summer time.

Have I understood this correctly?

Kirk_Masden

I have an app that deals with multiple time zones but I haven’t been able to figure out how to calculate the time differences between different parts of the world at different points in the year.

On Google sheets and in AppSheet, I think that NOW() always gives the correct time, with the appropriate adjustment for the time of year. I’m not sure, however, how to take that time and convert it to the same time in another part of the world (e.g. from a place without daylight savings to one with such an adjustment).

I hope to see an enlightening response to your inquiry that will help me too!

SkrOYC

I think this is correct.
I just took UTC and considered the offset of my country.
I think this could be related to the fact that scheduled events are run on the server, so you have to consider that the server needs standard time zones since there are just so many countries/cities.
Maybe in the future it’s more userfriendly and can consider summer time

WillowMobileSys

These are all the same time - at least for right now.

GMT Standard and Greenwich Standard are names for the same Timezone. I am not sure if they adjust for summer time clock changes. I have seen in other Google apps where Eastern Standard was the only listed timezone for Eastern and it DID adjust based on the summer time clock changes - i.e. the timezone name was misleading.

UTC is a time standard usually denoted by hourly offsets which more or less translates to the timezones - e.g. +1 or -4. The Zero offset is based on the GMT timezone so straight UTC (or UTC +0) is equivalent to GMT Standard. You will need to provide the offset, if you wish to properly make use of this time standard.

During summer or daylight savings times, the UTC ZERO offset is STILL based on GMT Standard - it is the offset that changes for other timezones that recognize summer time clock changes. So for example, in New York the UTC time right now is (UTC - 5:00). When daylight savings kicks in, New York will be (UTC - 4:00)

Also Maybe of interest…

GMT Standard = UTC +0:00
British Summer Time (BST) = UTC + 1:00

EDITED: Timezones in Portugal
Azores Time = UTC - 1:00
Western European Time = UTC + 0:00 (same as GMT)
Azores Summer Time = UTC + 0:00
Western Summer Time = UTC + 1:00 (basically same as BST - see note below)

NOTE: Not all summer time clock changes happen at the same time

British Summer Time starts on March 13, 2022
Western Summer Time starts on March 27, 2022

Kirk_Masden

This is part of what I found to be complex. If you only want to convert to one or two locations, it’s not too hard to figure out. But to make a universal clock for your app that will figure out the local time of any spot in the world based only on a location and a datetime in that location is pretty complicated, I think.

Am I correct to assume that AppSheet, like Google Sheets, doesn’t have a function that does that for us?

WillowMobileSys

Complicated for sure.

Probably the biggest complexity of all is that certain pockets of geographic regions within a Timezone don’t recognize the summer time clock changes - they ALWAYS stay on Standard time. This is too hard to keep up in a global sense so it’s better just to to let the end user control it themselves. This might be why there is no global function to deliver the time based on timezone and adjustments.

If we could only have a single Global timezone!!

Steve

Correct.