Question
Which time zone does Zendesk use?
Answer
Timestamps can be displayed in different time zones across your Zendesk account, depending on your configuration.
Click the sections below to understand where to view time zones across Zendesk:
Ticket time zone
Ticket timestamps appear in the time zone set on your user profile. Each user on the 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 the primary Zendesk account time zone:
- In Admin Center, click the Account icon () in the sidebar.
- Navigate to Appearance > Localization.
- Select the appropriate time zone in the Time zone menu.
To view or update an individual 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
- 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
There are three different places you might see a Talk timestamp and each location has different rules that dictate the time zone that is displayed.
To view call recording timestamps:
Timestamps in a ticket in the time zone set 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 primary Zendesk account time zone. See the previous tab for more information about how these time zones are set.
To view inbound call timestamps:
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.
To view Talk usage timestamps:
The timestamps are shown on the Talk usage page dashboard display in the primary Zendesk account time zone.
Chat time zone
Chat uses a mix of UTC, local time, and account settings to display the timestamps. The following sections describe which timezone is displayed across different features:
- The Chat transcripts in tickets are always displayed in the UTC time zone:
- The account time zone is mainly used for operating hours and the Analytics page. For information on setting the chat account time zone, see the article: How do I set the Chat dashboard timezone?
- Timestamps on the History page and within individual chats appear in the local time. The local time is determined by the system time on the agent device currently being used to view the data.
- The website analytics on the Home dashboard shows statistics in UTC, as does the CSV export file, which you can extract from this feature.
API timestamps
Timestamps in the API use UTC 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 help center customer portal use the timezone set on the device or operating system that the end user is viewing the ticket from. The timestamp will change automatically based on the timezone set on the device they are viewing the ticket from.
For more information on dashboard deliveries, see the article: How does Zendesk account for daylight savings time?
6 comments
Julio Encinas
"Chat transcript's time zone is always UTC."
This is a joke, really ... it causes huge confusion in my clients, because they have to keep calculating the time according to the time zone, since everything is already set up correctly in my Zendesk Support ...
We have had discussions since 2018 about the case and no official response from the company that would be the "best in the market"
12
Etienne Labaume
Setting a timezone per user is overly complicated when it's very simple to use the browser time/timezone as a reference in order to display a human friendly ticket timestamp. Any plan to support that? That would be one setting less, in a system that already has many.
8
Albert
Both Julio and Etienne are making solid points.
Anything to add, Zenny Desk? Users don't want to 'configure a profile' to make a simple request, they're trying to engage with your users, us, not Zendesk itself.
3
Dave Dyson
For visibility and to let others upvote and comments, could one of you post to our Feedback - Chat and Messaging (Chat) topic, using this template to format your feedback? Thanks!
-5
Cassie
How can I get email threading to show in local time zone and not UTC?
0
Mike DR
As per this article, being set in UTC is hardcoded in Zendesk.
0