Explanation: BB's Implementation of Time Zones

[JeffH]

I don't work for RIM, so I certainly can't speak to their future plans. I would be surprised if they changed how they handle time zones, simply because their method works and is consistent with their calendaring application. I'm not aware of any add-on that does it differently. I have heard nothing from the developer I mentioned earlier, since he told me he was moving the project to a back burner because the software hooks needed were not accessible.

It really is very simple. Enter your meetings in the correct time zone for the meeting location, and change your BlackBerry to the correct time zone when you arrive at that location. You will have to manually change the time zone, but if you put the meetings in correctly, you won't have any issues.

[Barry41561]

especially when syncing with Outlook.

I have little doubt that the BB is far more sophisticated than the Palm Treo 700 (there is no argument), but scheduling with the Palm was (is) easy. Synchronizing my Treo to my notebook was painless, regardless of where I was, or where I was going.

Jeff: If you would indulge me further (perhaps I'm just not fully understanding the 'work around'), can you please explain how you would go about scheduling (in Outlook) my recent trip, with appointments in NY / LA / London & Berlin. Also - please advise if I need to know the specific time zones that I'm traveling to, and whether I need to be aware of whether a country is using Daylight Savings or not.

My understanding from RIM was that I needed to know the actual GMT time of the city of my appointment in order to make a future appointment. Is that correct?

Again - thanks for your assistance here - but I tend to believe (from those I speak with) that there's significant disappointment in the marketplace with this aspect of the BB.

[JeffH]

Originally Posted by Barry41561

especially when syncing with Outlook. ...
Jeff: If you would indulge me further (perhaps I'm just not fully understanding the 'work around'), can you please explain how you would go about scheduling (in Outlook) my recent trip, with appointments in NY / LA / London & Berlin. Also - please advise if I need to know the specific time zones that I'm traveling to, and whether I need to be aware of whether a country is using Daylight Savings or not.

My understanding from RIM was that I needed to know the actual GMT time of the city of my appointment in order to make a future appointment. Is that correct?

Again - thanks for your assistance here - but I tend to believe (from those I speak with) that there's significant disappointment in the marketplace with this aspect of the BB.

You are absolutely correct about the marketplace's opinion of how the BlackBerry handles time zones. I don't know anybody who likes it, or intuitively gets it the first time they see it. Outlook is a significant contributor to the problem, because it doesn't make explicit what time zone you are using, and doesn't make it easy to schedule meetings in other than the default time zone. Outlook 2003 can display two time zones. I use that feature. But it's not the same as having a time zone selector dropdown box. I've been told that Outlook 2007 handles time zones differently from 2003, but I don't have 2007.

Because of the problems with Outlook 2003, I would schedule meetings for your recent trip using the BlackBerry Calendar input screen instead of Outlook. There you have the needed time zone selector. For NY and LA, you know the time zones. London and Berlin are named choices on the dropdown selector, so those are easy, too. Had you been stopping in Paris and Antwerp, you would have had to know the time zones for those cities. There are a number of 3rd party apps that give that info. WorldMate is one that a lot of people use. The BlackBerry takes care of the DST adjustment for you.

Schedule your meetings using the BlackBerry calendar input screen. If you have a meeting at 1:00 pm in Berlin on Tuesday, October 14, enter it as 1:00pm and select the "Amsterdam, Berlin (GMT+1)" time zone. When you press save, the meeting will show up on your BlackBerry calendar as 7:00 am ET, assuming you have your BlackBerry time zone set to Eastern time. When you arrive in Berlin and change your time zone to Berlin time, the meeting will show as 1:00 pm. Schedule the London meeting the same way.

The problem with this approach is obvious. Say you want to print your agenda for the trip in advance, and have the meetings show in the correct local time. The only way I know to do this is to change the time zone and print the agenda for each locale. Hardly optimum. If you look ahead at your calendar at meetings in different time zones, the meeting times won't be in local time. But they will be correct as you travel to each location and set your time zone appropriately.

I hope this helps. RIM's method will always work, as long as you know the time zone of your meeting location and use it when you schedule the meeting, but it doesn't make looking ahead at your calendar easy.

[jbonnot03]

Outlook 2007 has the option of choosing time zones when inputting a new appointment. This should help sort of. It is just like what was mentioned above, you have to know the city or the correct + or - figure from GMT.

[JeffH]

Originally Posted by jbonnot03

Outlook 2007 has the option of choosing time zones when inputting a new appointment. This should help sort of. It is just like what was mentioned above, you have to know the city or the correct + or - figure from GMT.

Thanks for the info. Does 2007 give you a drop down time zone selector similar to the BlackBerry calendar input screen? Does it use city names for time zones like the BlackBerry does? If it integrated a Worldmate-like listing of the top 250 cities in the world with their time zones and DST info, that would go a long way toward alleviating the confusion when entering appointments.

What is also needed is the ability to look ahead and see the calendar in the time zone that will be in use on that day. RIM could implement that without changing the underlying relationship between the clock and the calendar.

[jbonnot03]

See the attached screenshot of Outlook 2007. It gives you a drop down box for both the beginning and the ending time zone.

[JeffH]

Thanks for the screen shot. That's terrific. It completely addresses my wish-list for appointment entry with multiple cities in each time zone. As long as RIM interfaces with it properly, that should solve the entry problem with Outlook.

[jbonnot03]

Not sure if the two talk right. I use Google Sync for my blackberry and outlook so the time zone doesn't make it across to my phone. Someone else will have to test this. Sorry.

[FusionCrackberry]

hi JeffH,

sorry mate but i'm struggling. could be that all the timezones are upside down downunder but we have just moved to daylight saving time. The phone was set to blackberry time (i'm on enterprise server so i don't sync manually at all) and so i manually updated the time - moving it forward by an hour. all the appointments in my 8120 were moved back an hour (including all birthdays adn all day events as per fools above).
so, i get on google and find you. re-set the time to network, checked the time zone (on the pearl and in outlook calendar it is set to GMT + 10, sydney - that's me!) and that's all cool. but the pearl actually then re-set itself to an hour earlier on the clock (the network time is still right). so i manually re-set the clock to the right time. appointments are still out by an hour. tried turning the pearl off & then on again. comes back on with time as i set it but still the meetings are out. have you got any ideas as to what's going on, please?

[JeffH]

Originally Posted by FusionCrackberry

hi JeffH,

sorry mate but i'm struggling. could be that all the timezones are upside down downunder but we have just moved to daylight saving time. The phone was set to blackberry time (i'm on enterprise server so i don't sync manually at all) and so i manually updated the time - moving it forward by an hour. all the appointments in my 8120 were moved back an hour (including all birthdays adn all day events as per fools above).
so, i get on google and find you. re-set the time to network, checked the time zone (on the pearl and in outlook calendar it is set to GMT + 10, sydney - that's me!) and that's all cool. but the pearl actually then re-set itself to an hour earlier on the clock (the network time is still right). so i manually re-set the clock to the right time. appointments are still out by an hour. tried turning the pearl off & then on again. comes back on with time as i set it but still the meetings are out. have you got any ideas as to what's going on, please?

I think your problem is the same as the one described by a Melbourne user a week ago. Here's his thread: http://forums.crackberry.com/f49/tim...s-again-80166/

The specific problem he reported involved a Desktop synch, which probably isn't your problem, since you don't synch, but it seems from his post that the DST definitions have changed in Australia recently and RIM's definitions have not been updated yet. I don't know when that will be. There might be a patch on Rim's website now. You could check. In the interim, his solution was to use Hobart time. Will that work for you?

Glad you found CrackBerry on Google. Welcome; there's a great community here that together can solve just about anything.

[FusionCrackberry]

hey Jeff,

thanks so much! it is as you said - time source is network and i selected Hobart GMT + 10 as opposed to Sydney GMT + 10 and bob's your uncle! it's all good! thanks for saving me from the ducks!

[JeffH]

Great! Glad to help. Credit to the guy last week as well. If he hadn't asked his question, I wouldn't have known about the DST rules changes in Australia. Welcome to the Forums!

[davnel78]

Jeff - thanks so much for this! Glad I did a search for it, since I just wondered the same thing today, as I just traveled cross country and was wondering why this was.

[JeffH]

For anyone reading this thread and wanting the technical details behind RIM's implementation of time zones, and how it could be done differently, see this very informative post by member royhiggs: http://forums.crackberry.com/f9/floa...achment-82537/

[puddles99]

This is such a helpful thread, thank you. Like others, I remain a bit baffled that my former "dumb" phones appear smarter than my curve when it comes to Time Zones, but at least I now understand why!