Introduction

Time zone names are specified according to the List of tz database time zones.

JS7 supports time zones at a number of levels:

• JS7 Components
  • JOC Cockpit, Controller and Agents can be operated in different time zones. The time zone is specified by the respective operating system.
  • This includes to run a number of Agents in different time zones.
• Scheduling Objects
  • Orders are scheduled for a point in time calculated for the given time zone by the orders' JS7 - Schedules.
  • Jobs consider the time zone of their workflow to calculate JS7 - Admission Times for Jobs.
  • The JS7 - Daily Plan considers the Daily Plan time zone. A Daily Plan does not necessarily have to span midnight to midnight, instead the Daily Plan can use any hour of a day as the starting point for its 24 hours interval. The Daily Plan start time is calculated for the Daily Plan's time zone.
• Graphical User Interface (GUI)
  • Any dates and times that become visible with the GUI are converted to the time zone specified with the user's profile.
    • This applies to order start dates, job admission times, order and job history entries.
    • This applies to timestamps of order logs and task logs that are executed on Agents in different time zones. A user can choose with the user profile to be presented original timestamps of logs or to have timestamps converted to the time zone specified with the user profile.
  • When adding orders by the GUI then the time zone of the order's execution date is specified.
  • When posting notices to JS7 - Notice Boards then the time zone for the notice's lifetime is specified.
  • Any time zones applied by the GUI are by default populated from the user profile's time zone setting and can be modified by the user.

Time zone changes include that

• time zones can change for individual countries due to government's decisions. The same applies to the date and time of daylight saving change,
• such changes can occur at short notice and therefore are not reflected with a time zone database that ships with an earlier JS7 release.
• Consider to update JS7 at a regular basis in order to receive up-to-date time zone databases.

JS7 Components

The JS8 Controller, Agent and JOC Cockpit use the time zone specified by the operating system.

Controller

The Controller does not use any time zone specification except for the time zone reported by the operating system. The Controller forwards any dates converted to the UTC time zone.

Agent

Agents provide global environment variables that can be used in Shell jobs:

• JS7_AGENT_TZ indicates the Agent's time zone.
• JS7_SCHEDULED_DATE indicates the date an order is scheduled for and includes the offset of the Agent's time zone to UTC, e.g. 2020-12-03 09:13:59+0100.
• JS7_SCHEDULED_YEAR, JS7_SCHEDULED_MONTH, JS7_SCHEDULED_DAY, JS7_SCHEDULED_HOUR, JS7_SCHEDULED_MINUTE, JS7_SCHEDULED_SECOND are indicated with the Agent's time zone.
• JS7_JOBSTART_DATE indicates the date a job is started with the Agent's time zone and includes the offset of the Agent's time zone to UTC e.g. 2020-12-03 09:13:59+0100.
• JS7_JOBSTART_YEAR, JS7_JOBSTART_MONTH, JS7_JOBSTART_DAY, JS7_JOBSTART_HOUR, JS7_JOBSTART_MINUTE, JS7_JOBSTART_SECOND are indicated with the Agent's time zone.

Note: Please consider that the offset of the Agent's time zone to UTC will change during Daylight Saving Change. The offset to UTC indicated by the above environment variables is calculated at the point in time when a job starts. Jobs that are sensible to Daylight Saving Change should consider that such changes can occur during job execution.

JOC Cockpit

The JOC Cockpit does not use any time zone specification. Instead JOC Cockpit

• performs any date calculation for the UTC time zone.
• uses the operating system time zone when writing to log files, see JS7 - Logging.

Time Zone Support by Scheduling Objects

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Time Zone Support by the Graphical User Interface

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