Understanding How Time Zones & Locale are Handled 

The contiguous US has four standard Time Zones: Eastern Time, Central Time, Mountain Time, and Pacific Time. In addition, Alaska and Hawaii each have their own respective time zones, however, Hawaii does not observe Daylight Saving Time (DST).

The time zones in the contiguous US are often referred to by their generic name, without making a difference between Standard Time and Daylight Saving Time designations. For example, Eastern Time (ET) refers to Eastern Standard Time (EST) or Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), depending on which is currently in use. Thus, MinistryPlatform dynamically observes the Time Zone field by the time that is currently in use. In practice, this means that the local time in these time zones changes automatically, and there is no need for users to change their Time Zone Settings when Daylight Savings commences or concludes.

Choosing the Best Time Zone

Use the chart below to choose and identify the best Time Zones affecting your Users:

The Time Zone field or “standard time” of the User affects the date and time displayed in MinistryPlatform. Users can change this setting in the User Account Dialog located in the upper top right of the Platform or by accessing the User Account Record. If left blank, the system will use the Domain Time Zone. 

The Locale or “culture” of the User affecting the formatting of the date, time, and currency displayed. If left blank, the system will use the Domain Locale. Users may update this setting themselves in the User Account Dialog located in the top right of the Platform. 

The way we format our date, time, and currency changes depending on the country we live in, for instance:

• English (United States) locale references Date in a Month-Day-Year format such as 11-25-2019
• English (UK) locale references Date in a Day-Month-Year format such as 25-11-2019

In addition, here are some Time Zones that are generally NOT observed by MinistryPlatform customers: 

• (UTC-04:00) US Eastern Daylight Time - As of 2006, Indiana observes Daylight Savings Time so this additional Time Zone is essentially deprecated.
• (UTC-07:00) Pacific Daylight Time (Mexico) - DST observed in Mexico from Sun April 7th - Sun, October 27th (different than in the US where DST observed in US from Sun, March 10th - Sun, November 3rd)

For a full list of available Time Zones, see the source list from Microsoft.

Troubleshooting

Error: The supplied DateTime represents an invalid time. For example, when the clock is adjusted forward, any time in the period that is skipped is invalid. Parameter name: dateTime

• Resolution: Indicates the time chosen doesn't exist due to Daylight Savings Time (DST) commencing in the Spring.  If the error is received, it can be fixed by choosing a different time.