Question
Which time zone does Zendesk use?
Answer
Timestamps can be displayed in different time zones across your Zendesk account, depending on your configuration.
This article covers:
For information about timezone in Zendesk Explore, see this article: Which time zone does Zendesk Explore use?
Ticket timestamps
Ticket timestamps appear in your user profile time zone. Each user on your account can have a different time zone. However, by default, all user profiles are set to the primary Zendesk account time zone.
To view or update your account time zone
- Click the Admin (
) icon in the sidebar. - Select Settings > Account.
- In the top menu, click Localization.
To view or update a user profile time zone
- Click the Search icon (
) in the upper-right of the top toolbar. - Type in the user's name or email address and hit Enter.
- In the top menu, click Users.
- Choose a user from the list.
- Find the Time zone field in the side menu and amend it if needed.
Talk time zone
Phone call timestamps in a ticket are displayed in the time zone on the user profile of the agent or admin viewing the ticket. If no time zone is set in the user profile, the timestamp on the ticket defaults to the time zone for the account.
When your agents receive a call, Zendesk Support creates a ticket with an internal note that indicates the details of the call. The Time of call piece of information uses the UTC timezone.
The timestamps shown on the Talk History dashboard display in the default time zone of the account under Admin > Settings > Account > Localization.
Chat time zone
In-ticket Chat Transcript
Chat transcript's time zone is always UTC.
Chat account time zone
The account time zone is mainly used for operating hours and Analytics and can be set in the Timezone tab of the Chat account Settings.
Chat agent time zone
Timestamps in the Chat History and inside of individual chats appear in the local time. The local time is determined by the system time on the agent's device currently being used to view the data.
Website Analytics
The website analytics on the Home dashboard shows statistics in UTC.
However, the CSV export file that you can extract from this feature is in UTC.
API timestamps
Timestamps in the API use UTC time and are formatted as ISO 8601 strings. For example: 2015-04-16T09:14:57Z.
Some endpoints use Unix time, also known as Epoch or POSIX time. For example: 1455821369.
For more information, see the Zendesk Core API.
End user portal
Timestamps in the end user portal where your customers can view their existing tickets use the timezone set on the device/operating system they are viewing the ticket from. The timestamp will change automatically based on the timezone set on the device they are viewing the ticket from.
28 Comments
Are there any plans to set a different time zone per Brand?
Link "Talk timezone" at the top is broken.
Thanks for the heads-up, Sebastian! I'll let our Docs team know!
Fixed, thanks!
Since Zendesk assigns end-users' time zone as the account default zone and not based on the end-user's location for Talk and Text tickets, here's a workaround that folks might find useful. This trigger uses the end-user's phone number to assign the time zone via the Users API. Note that this doesn't account for multiple time zones in countries, but it's better than the default.
You'll need to first setup an "HTTP target" extension like this... (note that the URL starts with https://)
Then a trigger like this...
Thanks for sharing this, Josh! Would you have any interest in re-posting it as a community tip? That would give it more visibility, have it be indexed by search (posts are indexed; comments are not) and we can feature it in the monthly roundup.
Thanks, Nicole. I've posted it here.
The operating hours in chat doesn't adjust automatically as per Daylight Savings. We either have to adjust the operating hours or change the time zone to trick this. It is a HUGE oversight in my opinion where every software beautifully adjusts to Daylight Savings.
Please don't come and say I have to post this under feedback. This is NOT a feedback, it is a godzilla sized bug.
What's the timezone effect for end users if you change their timezone? Where will they see the updated time? I'm assuming any times on email notification will be set by their email provider - so is it just the Help Center/Guide where they'll see time stamps?
Hey Tara,
You are correct and these changes will not affect the email timestamps. The ticket itself will show the correct timestamp in the agent interface once the user profile has been set to the appropriate timezone. Same for when the user views their tickets from the My Activities page in Guide.
Let me know if the above doesn't make sense.
Cheers!
Is there a possibility of allowing the Talk dashboard to show the timezone of the current user instead of the timezone of the whole account? We have teams in two different timezones and it'd be nice for each team to be able to manage the Talk dashboard based on their current timezone.
Hey Kate,
There's no way to change the timezone in the Talk dashboard as this will always using the account's timezone.
Let me know if you have any other questions!
chat email transcript must be according to my(user) location not your location
I'm not seeing an option to change a timezone for our agents. We have agents working in different timezones, but the option to set their timezone appears to be missing.
Hello Shane Etzenhouser,
So to make sweeping changes for agents in Support you would want to navigate to the following toggle in your Admin settings. Let me know if this clarifies things a bit better or if you need any additional help.
To view or update your account time zone
Click the Admin () icon in the sidebar.
Select Settings > Account.
In the top menu, click Localization.
Best regards.
Hi Devan,
Not sure how to tag you like you did me to make sure you see this, but hopefully you just see it.
The change you're suggesting changes for all agents. As I mentioned, I'm trying to set up for agents working in different time zones.
We have agents in different time zones. Some in GMT+3 and others in GMT-7. So the 10 hour difference is confusing which ever agent doesn't win out of the setting you're referring to. Which is why I'm trying to set it per agent. Any answer on why the setting in this article isn't showing up for me or otherwise how to set this up per agent?
- Shane
Hello Shane Etzenhouser,
My apologies for misunderstanding your original ask. So the best way to go about editing the timezones of your agents would be to perform a user bulk update. I've gone ahead and linked an article below that goes into detail on how to implement this in your instance.
Bulk updating users
Best regards.
Thanks Devan,
Two things:
1. In the linked article, it looks like time zone can't be updated via the csv bulk updater, ("you cannot import timezones.") The API endpoint looks promising, but it's probably too big of a hurdle for most users.
2. I'm still curious to understand why the field doesn't show up for me in the user side menu as in the article above. That question keeps getting skipped.
Overall, this is way harder than it should be for a product that is supposed to meet the needs of customer support agents.
- Shane
Hi Devan,
Using the API endpoint from that article doesn't even work. I can see the time_zone field on the user via the API and can update other fields via the API, but if I update time_zone as specified here https://developer.zendesk.com/rest_api/docs/support/users#time-zone nothing changes on the user and no error is produced. It just ignores the change. This has become a major waste of time.
- Shane
Hey Shane,
Apologies for any confusion this has caused you! Just to confirm, what Support plan are you on currently? To set a timezone for individual users, you'd need to be on the Professional plan level in Support which may be why you're unable to see this field in the users profile.
Let me know!
Hi Brett,
We're on the essential plan, so you're basically saying that to add timezones to a geographically distributed team of 3 agents, we need to go from $180 per year to $1,764 per year. Wow. At this point I'm seriously doubting it's worth $180 per year and looking at your competitors. Not sure you guys have much more of a competitive advantage than being first to market, and you certainly don't seem very customer centric for a place that claims to have an edge on customer service. Pretty ridiculous, honestly. Timezones seems pretty basic to me.
- Shane
Hi Shane,
I completely understand where you're coming from and I do wish I was able to provide an alternative solution for you :-/ If you'd like to discuss this further, I'd be happy to get a ticket created and sent over to your account rep.
I did some additional digging on my end and I wasn't able to find an alternative solution other than upgrading your account.
Let me know if you have additional questions for me as I'm happy to assist further.
I recently found that our global account Time Zone was inadvertently set to Central America instead of Central Time (US & Canada). If I change this in the Account Localization settings, will this update all End Users and Agents as well (we are on Support Enterprise)? If not, is there a script or app that will do this globally? I can't imagine the amount of time it will take to do this manually.
Hi Dave Foster,
Updating the account time zone will not affect user timezones.
The time zone that is associated with your profile determines the time stamps that you will see on tickets, so if agents make sure that the time zone on their profile is correct you are all set there. Then again I say this without knowing the size of your team so I am not sure how much of a heavy lift that coordination is.
I just wanted to point it out because if your end-user has a certain time zone on their account, and they log a ticket, you won't see the time stamps based on what their time zone is set to. It will only be based on your profile.
If you want to update the time zone for individual users, the Users API has the necessary end points here: https://developer.zendesk.com/rest_api/docs/support/users
However, depending on your use case it might even be necessary to update end user profiles. Please feel free to share as much detail as what you are hoping to address/prevent and I'll be glad to help out as best as I can!
Well, it's not a super big deal. But we don't have users or Agents in different time zones. We are all located in the same state. But, the more I look into it, it seems that the time zone for our user profiles is being set arbitrarily to either Central Time (US and Canada) or Central America. I've edited all our Agents' profiles to have Central Time (US and Canada), but I just don't want to have to do this manually for all the other end users' profiles.
To add some clarity, we are using Support Enterprise for internal IT and HR support. We currently do not allow our end users to edit their profiles, and end users and Agents are added to Zendesk using security groups in Azure AD (which are synced from our On-Prem AD via AD Connect).
Hi Dave,
Thanks for expanding on that. With all of the agents profiles changed, nothing should look off in the interface as far as times go.
If you would like the end user profiles to be uniform, I would recommend a different API method that I indicated earlier: https://developer.zendesk.com/rest_api/docs/support/users#update-many-users
However, you won't see any odd timezone issues in your account as long as your agents have been updated.
Please let me know if we can assist further!
Thank you, Ben. I don't think I'd even know where to begin with using the API documentation you provided, as I have no coding experience. However, having edited the time zones of my agents, I am satisfied and will deal with end users when/if it is brought up to me.
Hi Dave,
That's understandable. The API is not for everyone, and I struggle with it myself. Unfortunately the timezone is not one of the things you can tweak with a bulk CSV import or it would be a bit easier.
Let us know if you run into any more trouble and we'll be glad to help.
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