UK Date Time fields and time-zone settings

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Hi, reaching out to all those familiar with the intricacies of UK British Summer Time with clocks going back and forward 1 hour twice a year.

I've recently started developing D365 for a UK-based organisation who are using Dynamics for the first time. In D365, the Date and Time field includes

‘User Local’ behaviour with ‘Date Only’ and ‘Date and Time’ formats
‘Date Only’ behaviour with ‘Date Only’ format
‘Time-Zone Independent’ behaviour with ‘Date Only’ and ‘Date and Time’ formats

Deciding on which field behaviour and format to use, as well as which time-zone setting in Personal Options UK Users should have, is an area that I’ve struggled with in the past.

In the last organisation I worked for based only in the UK, we developed version 2015 on-premise and used Date Only behaviour and format for recording a customer’s date of birth which, although contains no time element on the UI, on the database I think the date is stored with a time of midnight. When the clocks went back on hour, the birth date on all records created during the time of year when the clocks were one hour ahead, all changed to the previous day. Reporting on dates through Dynamics and through SSRS gave different results for the same data.

Can anyone advise which option is best for storing dates only such as birth/death dates so that the change in clocks do not impact the value stored in the fields?

For what type of date/time data would I use each option?

Also, for UK Users, which time-zone setting should they use in their Personal Options? Do they use GMT+00:00 Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London, or GMT Coordinated Universal Time?

Would they have to change their settings when the clocks go forward 1 hour next year? If so, which Time Zone option should they select?

Many thanks.

Aston

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RE: UK Date Time fields and time-zone settings

Hi Francesco. Thank you for your answer and the link to Scott Durow's post. In the post, the behaviour Scott describes under section: "Dynamics CRM *always* stores a time element with dates" and under section: "GMT 'Time-bomb' Gotcha", is the issue I've faced in the past. As the Date Only format always sets time to 12:00am, when the clocks go back 1 hour and users change their time-zone settings to correspond, the date value in a date-only field changes to the previous day.

I'm still unsure which combination of date/time type field and User's time-zone settings I should use to manage the UK clock changes twice a year.

I'm going to follow xRM Edge's suggestion of using Date Only format for the birth/death dates and (GMT+00:00 Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London) for the user's time zone setting, and also follow your advice that users do not need to change their time zone settings when clocks go forward 1 hour in March 2018. I will only know in March whether or not these settings have worked.
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RE: UK Date Time fields and time-zone settings

Hi Aston,

if you solved the problem thanks to an answer, please mark it as verified to encourage the community to provide more and more a better support. Thank you. Francesco

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Francesco Picchi

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Consultant, Bologna, ITALY

Independent Contractor

http://www.francescopicchi.com
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RE: UK Date Time fields and time-zone settings

Hi Aston,

no you need not, it's in charge of CRM.

To read about Date & TimeZone and know how it works please refer to this page:

https://community.dynamics.com/crm/b/develop1/archive/2011/12/06/dynamics-crm-datetimes-the-last-word

Hope it helps!

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Francesco Picchi

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Consultant, Bologna, ITALY

Independent Contractor

http://www.francescopicchi.com
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RE: UK Date Time fields and time-zone settings

Thanks for your suggestion xRM Edge. When the UK clocks go forward 1 hour next year, do users need to change their time zone settings again? If so, to what?
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xRM Edge on at

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RE: UK Date Time fields and time-zone settings

The Date Only format is designed to overcome the issue of different dates appearing for different people based on their time zone.

If I were you I'd go with Date Only format for the birth/death dates and GMT +00:00 for the users' time zone.