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Timezone Standardization in Gainsight

Overview

This article explains the timezone configuration process, and its behavior for time dependent data in Gainsight. It also explains how these timezones are handled across various areas of Gainsight for data that is ingested, stored, or reported.

Timezone definitions

Gainsight Timezone: Gainsight timezone allows you to set timezones for MDA objects as per your requirement. To know about the Gainsight timezones supported, refer to the Gainsight Supported Timezones spreadsheet.

UTC: Coordinated Universal Time which is abbreviated as UTC is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. It is within about 1 second of mean solar time at 0° longitude, and it does not observe daylight saving time.
Note: Gainsight recommends you to select UTC, when consistency is required among various users in different timezones. For example, if you share reports with users in different timezones, and the recipients want to view the report data in a consistent way, use UTC.

User Timezone: User Timezone is the timezone that is set for an individual’s Salesforce profile. You can set the user timezone in the My Settings > Personal > Advanced User Details page in Salesforce.

Time Zone Image 1.png

Configure Timezone

Perform the following steps to configure timezones:

  1. Navigate to Administration > Application Settings.
  2. Click the Timezone pane.

Configure Time Zone.png

  1. Select the required timezones for Gainsight and SFDC objects.
  • Gainsight: You can select the preferred timezone for Gainsight (MDA) objects.
  • SFDC: You can select UTC or User Timezone (configured in Salesforce) for SFDC objects. Select either one of them based on your requirement.
    Notes:
    • SFDC timezones are only used in Reporting consumption areas.
    • Use UTC when consistency is required among various users in the different timezones.
  1. Click SAVE.

Note: By default, Gainsight timezone is set to Pacific Daylight Time (America/Los_Angeles) GMT–07:00 and SFDC timezone is set to User timezone.

CAUTION: Do not change your timezone settings, after setting them up. It will result in serious data discrepancy issues. To know about what happens when timezone settings are changed, refer to the Effect of change in Timezone Settings section.

Timezone behaviour for Date and DateTime fields

Date field in Gainsight defaults to Gainsight timezone

  • When a date field is added in the system through data ingest from a third party source or from the UI, the date field defaults to the Gainsight timezone. You can also assign the timezone for the input data during ingestion.
  • When a date is retrieved from the Gainsight repository, no timezone conversions are performed.

DateTime field in Gainsight is stored in UTC but application layer receives it in Gainsight or User timezone

  • When a DateTime field is added in the system through data ingest from a third party source or from the UI, the DateTime field defaults to the Gainsight timezone. Then, it gets converted to UTC and is stored as UTC. You can also assign the timezone for the input data during ingestion.
  • When a DateTime field is retrieved from the Gainsight repository, it is provided in the timezone requested by the application, be it Gainsight timezone or user timezone.

Date to DateTime conversions and vice-versa in Gainsight

  • Date → DateTime: This conversion is made on the basis of Gainsight timezone and the time component is 00:00:00. For example: 2016-01-07 is converted to 2016-01-07 00:00:00 PST (here, PST is your Gainsight timezone).
  • DateTime → Date: This conversion is made by stripping the time component. For example: 2016-01-07 18:59:59 is converted to 2016-01-07 PST (here, PST is your Gainsight timezone).

Date to DateTime conversions and vice-versa in SFDC

  • Date → DateTime: This conversion is made by fetching the date in Gainsight timezone (00:00 AM) and inserting it into the same Gainsight timezone. Gainsight eventually converts and stores it in UTC. Same applies for the conversion when it happens the other way around.
  • DateTime → Date: This conversion is made by fetching the DateTime in Gainsight timezone, and stripping the time component from it and using the date part. If this date is inserted into the database, the date is fetched back and converted into DateTime again.

Data Aggregation

The definition of a day is stored in Gainsight timezone. Once aggregated, it loses the time component, and relies on the Gainsight timezone. Hence, when the Gainsight timezone is changed at a later point of time, the historical aggregations have to be re-run. The change will only impact the future aggregations.

Effect of change in Timezone Settings

Date: Date remains unaffected in storage, and the value remains the same. But the definition of the day/week changes. The aggregation from raw data to aggregated table must be re-run to resolve this. Since the CSM industry is not sensitive to this as of now it might not be required in most of the cases. The granularity of the consumptions is 95% on week level or above.

DateTime: DateTime is stored in UTC. If you change the timezone from PST to IST, when the data is retrieved, IST will be displayed for processing instead of PST. This applies to the future runs and is the expected behavior.

Timezone handling in Reporting

Timezone behavior for Reporting is specified in the following table:

Reporting Areas

Timezone Behavior

SFDC report

UTC or User Timezone (based on option selected in the Administration > Application Settings page)

MDA report

Gainsight Timezone
Note: Reporting API converts the results from UTC to Gainsight timezone before returning them.

SFDC/MDA: DateTime filter

Reporting API receives the incoming filter values in Gainsight or SFDC timezone, and converts them to UTC by appending the offset before consuming them into Query.

Scheduler

EST

Export as Excel

For MDA reports: Gainsight timezone

For SFDC: User timezone or UTC depending on the user configuration.

Export as CSV

  • When SFDC timezone is set to User Timezone: SFDC reports run in Gainsight OAuth Context (hence OAuth user timezone).

  • When SFDC timezone is set to UTC: SFDC reports run in UTC timezone. MDA reports run in Gainsight timezone.

SS export pptx

For MDA: Gainsight timezone

For SFDC: OAuth user timezone.

Dashboards Immediate exports

Send Now/Sent Test Mail:

  • When SFDC is set to UTC Timezone: SFDC reports in Dashboard exports run in UTC timezone. MDA reports run in Gainsight timezone.

  • When SFDC is set to User Timezone: SFDC reports in Dashboard exports run in User context. It can be UTC or user timezone based on the settings. MDA reports run in Gainsight timezone.

Scheduled Dashboard exports

When SFDC is set to User Timezone: SFDC reports in Dashboard exports run in Gainsight OAuth Context (hence OAuth user timezone). MDA reports run in Gainsight timezone.

When SFDC is set to UTC:  SFDC reports in Dashboard exports run in UTC timezone. MDA reports run in Gainsight timezone.

SS Tokens

Token values are replaced with either User timezone or UTC based on the user configuration.

Timezone handling in Rules Engine

All the data ingestions into Gainsight Repository through Rules Engine honour the Timezone set in the Application Settings page.

Navigate to Administration > Rules Engine. Click the Settings (gear) icon in the top right corner and select Timezone to view the Timezone dialog box. The timezone selected in the Application Settings page is displayed here. This is a read-only view and cannot be modified.

Timezone handling in Rules Engine.png

Note: Once set by the admin, timezone cannot be edited and it is available as a read-only field in the respective consumption areas.

Note: If you have feedback or questions about the feature explained in this article, please share them on community.gainsight.com 
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