Managing time zones

In this topic you can find information about managing time zones.

HCL Universal Orchestrator supports time zones specified with the area/city format, for example America/New_York or Europe/Paris.

Time zone settings apply to workstation, task, and workflow definitions.

If different time zones have been set on an agent, the time zone specified on the workflow or on the workstation applies. The time zone set on the agent is used as the default value during the creation of the workstation.

Managing daylight saving time

In this section you can find information about how HCL Universal Orchestrator manages the daylight saving time (DST) options.

Moving to daylight saving time on
The implementation of DST sets the clock time forward by one hour, resulting in a leap of one hour. The instances that are scheduled in that missing hour, are moved at the beginning of the DST. For example, if TASK_A is scheduled to run at 2:30 a.m. and the DST shifts from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m., TASK_A scheduling time moves to 3 a.m. If multiple instances of the same workflow are scheduled in that time interval, only one instance runs at 3 a.m.
Moving to daylight saving time off

Moving to DST off, the clock time is set to one hour earlier with respect to the DST time, resulting in an hour that repeats twice. The instances that are scheduled to run in the repeated hour are scheduled in the first occurrence of that repeated hour.

Workflows that contain the every keyword, run with the defined frequency even during the DST change.

Comments

Below, you can find more information about some general rules that apply to time zones management.
Time zone of workflows
When defining a job stream, you can set a time zone for the entire workflow and for tasks within the workflow. The time zone that you set on the tasks can be different from the time zone of the tasks within the tasks. You can find time zone conversion criteria below:
  • If no time zone is set for a task within a tasks, then the time zone set on the workstation where the task is scheduled applies.
  • If no time zone is set for a task or tasks, then the time zone set on the workstation where the workflow is scheduled applies.
  • If no time zone is set for a task or tasks or workstation, then the Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) time zone applies.
Time zone of ocli plan
ocli plan uses the time zone set on the config.yaml file. If a time zone has not been set, Orchestration CLI searches for the time zone set on the operative system. If Orchestration CLI cannot identify the specified time zone, then UTC applies.
Dependency resolution
Dependencies are evaluated using the time zone of the successor workflow, that is the job stream that owns the dependency. If a time zone is not set on the successorworkflow, then the rules mentioned in the previous section apply.
Applying an offset to a time zone when scheduling workflows
If you submit a workflow that contains an at dependency with an offset of +n days, HCL Universal Orchestrator adds the specified offset to the date. Then, the time zone that has been set in the at dependency is converted too.