Time Zones

Particularly in a multi-national organization, scheduling needs to cope with different timezones. In TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM, a base calendar is associated with a timezone.

The default base calendar uses the timezone set by the TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM server’s operating system, but you can create other base calendars that use other timezones. Overlay calendars are not associated with timezones at all, but take their timezone from whichever base calendar they are associated with.

If the timezone of a base calendar is changed, that does not cause any adjustments to existing or future entries defined in that calendar. For example, suppose the timezone on a base calendar is set to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), and the base calendar defines:

  • the working week as from 09.00 to 17.30 from Monday to Friday inclusive.
  • with an exclusion to the working week defined as non-working time from 16.00 to 17.30 on Friday 17 September 2010.

If the timezone associated with the base calendar is then changed to Pacific Daylight Time (PDT):

  • future working weeks are now from 09.00 to 17.30 from Monday to Friday inclusive PDT.
  • the working time exclusion is now from 16.00 to 17.30 on Friday 17 September 2010 PDT.

BPM stores all date-time entries, whether on a base or an overlay calendar, with a timezone of UTC attached. This does not mean that they are necessarily intended to represent UTC times; in effect times are treated as timezone-neutral.