Hi All,

We are going to be operational with BaaN across different time zones in USA.

So I would like to know how everyone implemented the time zones in the user data template - did you use multiple time zones or single time zones ?

BaaN stores all the times in the UTC format and displays according to the timezone of the user based on the user data template. But we are trying to investigate how the situation is handled for order creation, generation, shipped, delivered etc wrt to the time stamping.

Your ideas/comments are appreciated.

Thanks!

NPR -
We have implemented Baan V with sites accross time zones - what is your specific question?

No matter what time zone an order is created/shipped/delivered in, the time is stored in the database as UTC base time. So...

For American Time Zones:

An order created by a user assigned Eastern Time at 4pm would have the same time stamp in the database as an order created by a user assigned Central Time at 3pm. The person viewing the order created at 4pm eastern time would see the time listed as 3pm if they were on central time, and 1pm if they were on Pacific.

Hi Lisa,

I am advocating here for multiple time zones and trying to convince our functional people.

Since, I am more technical then functional I was trying to understand their perspective and get to know more from other BaaN implementations how the situation is handled.

Our servers are located in the Pacific NW. So our Unix box systems are in PST time zones. The end users are in EST time zone setting, many are in Michigan now, although some of the users are in central time (Texas). Our guys are not sure if their programs which do order planning etc, can handle different timezones, like an order/shipment created by a user in EST-9:00 am and planned to be delivered at 12:00 PM EST, the PST guys should see it as 9 AM or 12 PM? I didnt quite understand their concern or perspective fully yet. To me it seems logical, that if I receive a shipment today morning I like to see it with a time view of 9 AM my time than 12 PM their time EST and make a mental calculations to make differences between times zones and places.

I am trying to explain/convince them that BaaN handles times as UTC format in the database and its only the view based on the Timezone in the user data template that we see different timings.

NP -
Our situation is the same - one server located on the East coast, end users located in Eastern and Central time zones
For your scenario, the User in Eastern Time enters the order at 9am, ship time of 12:00pm. When your Pacific users pull up that entry, they see a time of 6am, ship time of 9am.

If the Eastern Time user sets the shipment time to 12:00, that is 9am Pacific. If the Pacific user wants to select by time or range of time, they are selecting for 9am. When the Pacific user ships at 9am, it shows as 12:00 to the Eastern Time user.

The time zones work as advertised in Baan V, but it is a different concept than the users are used to. It does the thinking for them, and they are not used to that, so they over think it. Also, some additional confusion happens if the East Coast people print a report, and send it to the West Coast people. The time will show East Coast, obviously, and if the West Coasters are trying to find data based on East Coast times, they would have to perform the math. But, they would have to perform the math anyway without UTC. It' just confusing, because sometimes they do have to and sometimes they do not.

-- -set TZ=EST6CDT

here you can specify -userdefined- in this bw config which timezone the user is on ...

hope you can use that!
jochen

here are my findings about this issue and I logged a case with BaaN and got some clarifications.

I hope it is useful for everyone to understand the concept of this issue.

More Infomation about how BaaN ERP handles Time Zones

We uses client from Win95 to WinXP.
and i don't know excalcy when the problem occured for the first time.
i think this morning. because no one came to me before this moning with this problem