Why does history tab show different value for attributes of type timestamp?
Consider the following work item: In the database, it has the following values set:
RESOLUTION_DATE ACTUAL_FINISH_DATE
-------------------------- --------------------------
2014-08-15-00.09.37.028000 2014-08-15-00.09.37.267000
(Actual Finish Date is a custom attribute of type timestamp.)
I would suppose the timestamp is stored using UTC. Now if a user in Europe (i.e. Germany) looks at in the UI, it shows 1:09 am on August 15th, both for actual finish date and resolution date. For a user on the US east coast however, on the main tab the values are converted using local timezone, thus the user sees "August 14th, 7:09pm".
For teams which are dispersed across multiple geographies, this may lead to confusion. Please let us know if something can be configured to avoid this discrepancy, or consider this as a defect and provide a fix in a future version of RTC.
Thanks,
Markus
P.S.: Server is running RTC v4.0.2
Accepted answer
If you disagree with the design, please create an enhancement request or defect with support or here: https://jazz.net/jazz/web/projects/Rational%20Team%20Concert#action=com.ibm.team.workitem.viewWelcome
Please note, the community is not picking up questions here and create a defect for the person that asks the question.
Comments
Hi Ralph,
I agree to your point that the user's local timezone is used - but only on the details tab. On the history tab some other timezone is being used, not sure if that's the timezone in which the server is located or UTC.
Because of this, different date values (+/-1 day) may be displayed to the user. I tend to disagreeing to this design...
Just looking at a work item on our servers, you are right. The timestamps in the details (e.g. creation date) are shown in my local timezone. The same timestamp on the history tab is shown in a different timezone. the difference is 6 hours. The server sits in Toronto, so the data shown is in the server time.
I was unfortunate to have to work with timestamps recently and it is a mess. I think there is no good way to handle it.
I would agree there might be better ways to show this. E.g. have the option to see the server and the local time (e.g. using a hover).
Feel free to open a work item. Please add the work item link as a comment here.