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Advanced Features – Timezones

Created OnOctober 22, 2020
Last Updated OnOctober 23, 2020

If you are running an online business, timezone feature of Advanced Features addon can be quite useful as your clients can view available slots and booked appointments in their local time. In summary the following features are available:

  • Automatic detection of user’s timezone from his browser with javascript
  • Timezone selection pulldown menu creation with setting field in user profile page or shortcode or sidebar widget for manual setting
  • Display of available time slots in user’s local time
  • Display of list of bookings in user’s like time
  • In confirmation and other emails, booking details in local time of the user
  • Admin can view working hours of providers in any timezone they wish
  • Similarly service providers can view own working hours in any timezone they wish if they are allowed to edit own working hours
Prerequisites

Visit Settings → General WordPress admin page and check if Timezone setting is correct. Ensure that nearest city to your business location is selected rather than UTC offset, otherwise DTC (Daylight savings time) will not be reflected correctly.

Visit WP BASE → Global Settings → Advanced → Timezones tab and set Enable Timezones as “Yes”.

Automatic Detection of User Timezone

When user visits your website, their timezone is automatically detected from their browser. No other setting is required except for setting Enable Timezones as Yes. The detected timezone will be used for all client time calculations unless this value is overridden manually as explained below.

Manually Setting Timezone

Sometimes automatic detection may not reflect user’s preferred location, e.g. if they are travelling. For such cases you may allow user to correct/override automatic detection. WP BASE provides the following ways to achieve this:

  • By Settings in Profile (Account) Page: Logged in users can manually select desired timezone in their profile page. A selection pulldown menu is visible after you set Allow Clients Select Own Timezone and Allow Service Providers Select Own Timezone as “Yes” for clients and providers, respectively.
  • By Shortcode: [app_timezones] shortcode can be inserted to any page/post content, but probably you will prefer to add it to your booking page. This shortcode creates a pulldown menu using which your clients pick their preferred timezone.
  • By Sidebar Widget: If your theme supports sidebar widgets, you can add WP BASE Timezone Selection widget in Appearance → Widgets WordPress admin page.

On top of timezone selection menu, there is “Server Timezone” selection, which practically disables timezone adjustment for the user.

Time Values in Emails

Booking start and end times which are created with DATE_TIME and END_DATE_TIME placeholders will be automatically adjusted to display local time of the client based in timezone of the client that was saved during booking. If you want to display start and end times of the booking based on server time, you can use SERVER_DATE_TIME, SERVER_END_DATE_TIME placeholders.

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