Automating Across Time Zones

One of the main design goals for OpCon was to make it easy to use and easy to understand. One of the core decisions was to base all date and time related automation information on the date and time of the OpCon server. This approach provides a consistent reference date and time for all graphical interfaces and LSAM machines. In a multi-location environment, the potential exists for a single user to have to be aware of activities or events occurring in multiple time zones which could cause other activities to be triggered on machines in other time zones. Without a consistent central reference for date and time, attempting to coordinate these events and activities would be extremely difficult, and as a result, prone to error.

Depending on the automation requirements, the OpCon administrator may choose to configure the OpCon server's time zone for Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). If there are users and LSAMs distributed across widely varied time zones, SMA Technologies strongly recommends setting the SAM server to UTC and establishing that common frame of reference. If only two or three time zones are part of the environment, the time on the OpCon Server must be known by all users so the jobs are configured properly for the desired start times.

To aid with communication across time zones, OpCon support supports the following:

• The machine definitions can include a Time Zone Name and Offset from UTC.
• The SAM maintains a value in the database indicating its Time Zone Name and Offset from UTC which is displayed with the Last SAM Pulse in Operations Views.
• If the machine definitions contain time zone information, it is used in combination with the SAM's time zone information to show an LSAM's time offset from the SAM.