Since Amelia doesn't have any time zone settings, it inherits the time zone from WordPress. If your time zone is in UTC+/- format, please change it by selecting the city near you. Also, please check if you enabled "Show bookings in customer's time zone" in Amelia's General settings so your clients will always see the time according to their current timezone.
If you are in a different time zone than your WordPress site is, and you've enabled this option, the times on front-end will show available time slots in your time zone, which will be the time you set in back-end +/- the time difference (depending on where you are in regards to the time zone set in WordPress' General settings).
Thanks, but I think you don't understand the problem. Please read my question again.
I want to know how website owners are supposed to deal with Daylight Savings time changes, with respect to managing appointments in the Amelia plugin.
If website owners adjust the UTC+/- in their General Settings, that means that any appointments which were previously booked will now be wrong for clients who are in time zones which DON'T HAVE corresponding time zone adjustments.
So do you suggest that website owners need to manually check the locations of all their booked clients and advise them individually when they are impacted in such a way?
Most of the world, except for North America, Europe and Australia does NOT use Daylight Savings Time.
After looking into this a bit further and doing some testing, it appears as though Amelia behaves as follows for Daylight Savings changes. Everything below is when Amelia is configured to show times in the customer local time.
When the UTC+/- is changed on the dashboard:
1) The FUTURE availability times on the customer facing calendar adjust accordingly forward or back by one hour. That's expected. Great.
2) Any existing bookings stay as they are for the customer, relative to their own time zone. Awesome!
3) If the time zone differential changes by one hour, the time on the EMPLOYEE appointment calendar changes by one hour IF the customer is in a non-DST time zone. That's expected. Great.
So in fact it seems as though the Amelia developers have already thought this through. Can you confirm that the above 3 statements are correct?
If you have set your WordPress timezone to one of the UTC+- options, not the City timezone option, it could cause issues. Because these UTC options don't recognize the daylight savings and the time change, and since this setting applies to Amelia as well, we recommend choosing one of the City options there instead, then the 3 mentioned points will be correct.
If you leave UTC+/- format (for example UTC+1), that will remain the same after the clocks go back one hour. So, this time zone is a fixed time zone, and it doesn't update according to Daylight Savings Time. When you select the city you're in, the time zone is automatically updated.
So, please make sure your time zone settings are set to the City option.
Hi Paul
Thank you for reaching out to us.
Since Amelia doesn't have any time zone settings, it inherits the time zone from WordPress. If your time zone is in UTC+/- format, please change it by selecting the city near you. Also, please check if you enabled "Show bookings in customer's time zone" in Amelia's General settings so your clients will always see the time according to their current timezone.
If you are in a different time zone than your WordPress site is, and you've enabled this option, the times on front-end will show available time slots in your time zone, which will be the time you set in back-end +/- the time difference (depending on where you are in regards to the time zone set in WordPress' General settings).
Thanks, but I think you don't understand the problem.
Please read my question again.
I want to know how website owners are supposed to deal with Daylight Savings time changes, with respect to managing appointments in the Amelia plugin.
If website owners adjust the UTC+/- in their General Settings, that means that any appointments which were previously booked will now be wrong for clients who are in time zones which DON'T HAVE corresponding time zone adjustments.
So do you suggest that website owners need to manually check the locations of all their booked clients and advise them individually when they are impacted in such a way?
Most of the world, except for North America, Europe and Australia does NOT use Daylight Savings Time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_by_country
This is a BIG problem.
After looking into this a bit further and doing some testing, it appears as though Amelia behaves as follows for Daylight Savings changes. Everything below is when Amelia is configured to show times in the customer local time.
When the UTC+/- is changed on the dashboard:
1) The FUTURE availability times on the customer facing calendar adjust accordingly forward or back by one hour. That's expected. Great.
2) Any existing bookings stay as they are for the customer, relative to their own time zone. Awesome!
3) If the time zone differential changes by one hour, the time on the EMPLOYEE appointment calendar changes by one hour IF the customer is in a non-DST time zone. That's expected. Great.
So in fact it seems as though the Amelia developers have already thought this through.
Can you confirm that the above 3 statements are correct?
Hi Paul
If you have set your WordPress timezone to one of the UTC+- options, not the City timezone option, it could cause issues. Because these UTC options don't recognize the daylight savings and the time change, and since this setting applies to Amelia as well, we recommend choosing one of the City options there instead, then the 3 mentioned points will be correct.
If you leave UTC+/- format (for example UTC+1), that will remain the same after the clocks go back one hour. So, this time zone is a fixed time zone, and it doesn't update according to Daylight Savings Time. When you select the city you're in, the time zone is automatically updated.
So, please make sure your time zone settings are set to the City option.
Thanks. You can close this ticket.
You are most welcome
If there is anything else we can assist you with please don't hesitate to open a new ticket.
Have a wonderful day!