Change the Time Zone for a Project

You can define a time zone for your project in Policy Modeling. This setting determines the time zone in which date and time ('datetime') attributes are entered, calculated, and displayed during an Intelligent Advisor interview (and during other interactions with the policy model).

By default, the project time zone is set to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

Image of Time zone select drop-down list on Language subtab of Project Tab in Policy Modeling

To change the time zone for a project:

  1. Open the project in Policy Modeling. Navigate to the Language subtab of the Project tab.
  2. In the Region area of the Language subtab, click the Time zone is set to field.
  3. Locate the desired time zone in the drop-down list.

    Image of Time zone is set to drop-down list on Language subtab of Project tab in Policy Modeling, showing list expanded and a time zone selected

    Time zones appear in the drop-down list in two main formats. These are <region name/city_name> (for example 'America/Sao_Paulo') and Etc/GMT<+or-><number> (for example 'Etc/GMT+3'). The drop-down list has a search field at the top which filters as you type. To quickly find the time zone you need in a particular region or city, start typing the first few letters of the region or city name into the search field. To see a list of time zones relative to GMT, type GMT or Etc in to the search field.

    The time zone labels in the Time zone is set to drop-down list are the labels used in the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) Time Zone Database. In this database, the labeling of time zones relative to GMT is the reverse of the actual time offset (for example, the time zone where the time is 10 hours ahead of GMT has the IANA label 'Etc/GMT -10'. This means that if you want your policy model to operate in the time zone 10 hours ahead of GMT, in the Time zone is set to drop-down list in Policy Modeling you need to select 'Etc/GMT -10'. For more information, see Time Zone Database.
  4. Click to select the time zone you require for your project.

    Language subtab of Project tab in Policy Modeling, showing project time zone set to a selection from the Time zone is set to dropdown
    The text in the Time zone is set to field changes to display the selected time zone.

    At runtime, datetime values in your policy model are calculated and displayed in the selected time zone.

    Appearance of a datetime attribute on an interview screen showing time zone code

    Appearance of a datetime attribute on an interview screen showing a GMT- relative time zone code

Tips:

  • For datetime attributes in your policy model, the default output format includes a 3 or 4 character time zone code (for example 'EDT' or 'CEST') or a GMT offset (for example 'GMT+03:00') so you can easily see which time zone the policy model is using at runtime. You can change this output format to:
    • display the long text form of the time zone name (for example, 'Eastern Daylight Time'), or
    • hide the time zone information altogether.

    For more information, see Change the Formatting of Datetimes.

  • In addition to listing time zones by region/city and GMT label, the Time zone is set to drop-down list contains the four US time zones EST5EDT (Eastern) CST6CDT (Central) MST7MDT (Mountain) and PST8PDT (Pacific), and special local time zones listed in the IANA Time Zone Database such as America/Indiana/Marengo.
  • Time zones are expressed using the Java Simple Date format convention. For more information on the Java Simple Date Format convention, see Class SimpleDateFormat.
  • For more information about time zones in general, see the Wikipedia article on lists of time zones.


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