Time Zone – How does it affect current Sourcing Events?

Several people have been concerned about the affect changing your Time Zone  setting will have on any existing Bids, Quotes and/or Projects that are Open for Vendor Responses.  Please read the following steps that explain how the settings work in a real life example.  Hopefully, this will set everyone’s mind at ease!

1. In this example, a Quote is published with a due date of 1/22/2010 and a due time of 11:00 AM.
2. As the Quote Facilitator, I have Eastern Time Zone setting on my log in at the time the Quote is created and published to the Vendors.
3. One of the invited Vendors logs in to accept the Quote Ts and Cs while his Time Zone Setting is set at Eastern Standard.  As expected, the Quote is due at 11:00 AM.
4. The Countdown Clock displays the amount of time left for responding to this event.
5. The Quote Facilitator decides to change the time zone to be consistent with their location and changes the time Zone setting to be Pacific Time.
6. After logging back to display the changes, the Quote now indicates a due time of 8:00 AM – consistent with the 3 hour time difference between Eastern and Pacific Time Zones.
7. Meanwhile, the vendor has logged out and logs back in to work on the Quote.  This is after the Facilitator had changed the time zone to Pacific Time.
8. The Quote due time still displays as 11:00 am.  The countdown clock still displays the amount of time remaining till the due time arrives.  The vendor has no idea the facilitator has changed their time zone, and doesn’t need to know.
9. For the sake of this example, I’ll say the vendor is on Central time and decides to make the change to his profile.  The vendor makes the change to Central time and logs back in.
10. The Countdown clock has not been affected and the due time is now displayed as 10:00 am.
11. So, neither party knows the other has changed their time zone setting, but all events within each individual’s login displays time based on the time zone setting they have chosen..
12. Click here to see the facilitator’s and vendor’s final screen based on the above exercise.

So, the bottom line is that there is no impact to current, past or new sourcing events when anyone’s time zone setting is changed!

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