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About Global Time Zone and Universal Time Coordinated (UTC)

Global deployments typically span multiple countries and have users working in several different time zones. The global time zone feature allows you to track dates and times consistently across time zones by specifying that you will use Universal Time Coordinated (UTC). Using UTC is strongly recommended. UTC is enabled by default for Siebel applications.

NOTE:  UTC is essentially the equivalent of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). However, certain localities using GMT or British Standard Time (BST) as a time zone observe daylight savings time (DST). DST does not apply for UTC itself, because it serves as a baseline against which all other time zone and DST offset adjustments apply.

The global time zone feature allows you to store date-time data in a common format and provides the following key benefits:

• Users can view dates and times in their local time zone, regardless of where work items were created.
• Users in different time zones can jointly handle team-based activities, such as managing service requests.

NOTE:  Windows regional settings on client machines do not affect UTC. Although you can deploy your Siebel applications using UTC without setting the database server to UTC, you can optionally do so, as described later in this chapter.

CAUTION:  If you do not want to deploy with UTC or are not ready to do so, you must review Guidelines for UTC and Non-UTC Deployments and related topics.

Subtopics in this section are:

• About UTC System Preferences
• About UTC Data Conversion
• Example of UTC Data Conversion
• Guidelines for UTC and Non-UTC Deployments
• About Enabling UTC for Existing Deployments