Understanding Time Zones and the Display of Event Times in Team Calendar

Summary

Team Calendar Events are created in the time zone of the User creating the Event. Events are displayed in the time zone of the User viewing the Event.

Changing the time zone used to view Team Calendar changes how event times are displayed for that user; it does not change the time zone in which another user created the event.

Solution

Details

When first using Team Calendars, you are requested to confirm your time zone. This is based on the Server Default.

When you view Events created by another User, they appear in your time zone. For example, this Event created in Sydney (UTC+11) time zone during daylight savings time, is for a weekly meeting starting at 10am on Mondays:

For a User in Perth time zone (UTC+8)

will see this in their calendar:

Note that the week of 4th April, the time changes because Sydney changes from UTC+11 to UTC+10 due to the end of daylight savings, however Perth does not have daylight savings time and so remains on UTC+8. The meeting time is still 10am Sydney time, but changes to 8am Perth time.

This is expected when daylight-saving changes affect the event creator’s time zone but not the viewer’s time zone: the meeting remains at 10am Sydney time while its displayed time for a Perth viewer changes from 7am to 8am.

Notes

(Cloud) To change the time zone used when you view Team Calendar events, update your Atlassian account settings: 1. Select your profile avatar in the top-right corner, then select Account settings. 2. Select Account preferences from the left-hand menu. 3. Under Time zone, select your preferred time zone from the dropdown. 4. Your changes will save automatically.

(DC) To change your time zone:

1. Go to User Menu > Profile > Settings.

2. Click Edit.

3. Choose time zone.

4. Click Submit.

Changing the server time zone will require Confluence to be restarted.