User Time Zones Add-On

The User Time Zones Add-On allows you to set time zones for teachers and clients so that their lessons are displayed in their local time. This add-on is a great solution for online education businesses with teachers and students in different time zones.

How to enable it:

To enable the add-on, go to Account & Settings -> Integrations & Add-ons and click on the “Enable” link under User Time Zones. No additional settings are required to set up the add-on.

Company Timezone

Existing lessons and events have been scheduled in the time zone that is specified on your Account Settings page under Localization Settings.  You can change this time zone field and new lessons will be scheduled in the selected time zone.

Setting Time Zones on Profiles

Once enabled, you’ll be able to select a time zone directly on user profiles.  You only need to set time zones on profiles that are different than your company time zone. If no time zone is specified on a profile, then the company time zone will be used.

• Staff Profile:

When the Employee Type” is set to “Administrative Staff” the employee will use the same time zone as the company.

• Teacher Profile:

To select a time zone on an employee’s profile, go to Employees -> Employee List, and click on the pencil (edit) icon next to the relevant employee’s name. Scroll down to the Time Zone field and make your selection. Remember to save the form.

• Family Profile:

To select a time zone on a family profile, go to Students -> Families and click on the edit icon next to the relevant family. Scroll down to find the Time Zone field, make your selection, and save the form.

• Child Student Profile:

The family’s timezone will not be applied to child profiles automatically. To select a time zone for a child student, go to Students -> Students and click on the edit icon next to the relevant child student’s name. Select a time zone in the Time Zone field and save the form.

You can also navigate directly to a child student’s profile by going to Students -> Families and clicking on the student’s name next to the relevant family.

• Independent Student Profile:

To select a time zone for an Independent Student, go to Students -> Students and click on the edit icon next to the relevant student. Set a time zone and save the form.

Time Zones & Viewing Events

Calendar events are displayed in the time zone of the user viewing it.

For example:

If a company is in the Eastern Time Zone and schedules a lesson that occurs on September 20, 2017, at 2 pm Eastern Time, and a teacher’s time zone is set to Pacific Time, this lesson will appear in the teacher’s account as September 20, 2017 at 11 AM Pacific Time -- reflecting the 3 hour difference between the two time zones.

Lesson Reminders & Notes

The lesson time displaying in Lesson Reminder notifications (for both email and SMS reminders), as well as Lesson Notes, will appear in the user’s timezone to avoid any confusion.

A {TIME-ZONE} merge tag is available in all notification templates related to events to make the timezone more obvious to the user. This allows them to follow up about any scheduling issues prior to their lesson.

Editing Lessons

If a lesson is scheduled in a time zone that is different from the user’s time zone, the “Edit Lessons Form” will display the lesson in the time zone that it was scheduled in.  

For example:

If a teacher schedules a lesson at 11 am - 12 pm Pacific Time, when viewed from a company account on Eastern Time the lesson will appear on the calendar as 2 pm - 3 pm Eastern Time.  However, if the company admin or a staff user edits this lesson, the “Edit Lesson Form” will show the times of 2 pm - 3 pm and a time zone field showing Pacific Time.

Invoices

If individual lessons are added to an invoice, they will appear in the customer’s selected time zone. This was done intentionally to ensure that your clients are not confused by the lesson times appearing in a different time zone from their own.

Teacher availability

Availability is based on the teacher’s selected time zone and is converted to whatever time zone is set on the profile of the user viewing it.

For example, if a teacher’s time zone is set to Pacific Time and they are available from 11 am - 5 pm, their availability will appear as 2 pm- 8 pm to an admin/staff account that is on Eastern Time.

If a student is viewing teacher availability in their Teachworks account (on the day or week view) and their time zone is set to Mountain Time, the teacher’s availability will appear as 12 pm - 6 pm.

What happens if you disable the add-on?

If you disable the add-on, teachers, families, and students will see events displayed in the company’s selected time zone. However, the time zone fields will still be saved on each client/employee profile, so if you decide to re-enable the add-on, you won’t have to go through the effort of applying time zones to client and employee profiles again -- you’ll only have to update about profiles added after you’ve disabled the add-on.

How is Daylight Savings Time handled?

Consider a repeating series of lessons that is scheduled for 5pm Eastern Time. These lessons will appear as 5pm during Daylight Savings Time and 5pm after Daylight Savings Time.

If the events are viewed by someone in Central Time, they will appear as 4pm during Daylight Savings Time and 4pm after Daylight Savings Time as both of these time zones observe Daylight Savings Time.

 If these same lessons are viewed by a user whose time zone is set to Hawaii (which does not observe Daylight Savings Time) they will appear as 11am during Daylight Savings Time and 12pm noon after Daylight Savings time.