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When a user sets an item's publishing restrictions, it's possible to define dates and times in the "publishable from" and "publishable to" fields. These date/time values will be interpreted in the time zone of the server.

Publishing settings

This is a problem for our users because a single Sitecore CM instance will have content for many country-specific sites and content authors are located across different time zones. If the server time zone is UTC, then the UK content authors might be OK, but the US content authors will have a hard time setting up the publishing date/time, especially since there is no indication as to what time zone is used.

What is a good way to solve, or at least mitigate this issue?

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    The most user friendly solution would be to display the time zone picker on UI (IIRC, EXM uses such approach for dispatching). But, that sounds like a feature request rather than a quick fix.
    – Serhii Shushliapin
    Commented May 8, 2017 at 11:29
  • @SergeyShushlyapin Agreed. The time zone could also be pre-selected based on the user's browser time zone. I am wondering if anyone has implemented this.
    – Dmytro Shevchenko
    Commented May 8, 2017 at 11:31
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    @DmytroShevchenko I have run into the same issue - due to budget constraints for the client - we ran the server in UTC and just had to train the content editors. We wrote them a small utility so they didn't have to calc in their heads :)
    – Richard Seal ♦
    Commented May 8, 2017 at 13:40
  • @RichardSeal can you elaborate on the utility mentioned above? Is it a custom command in content editor?
    – Vijaya Akkenapally
    Commented Jun 4, 2018 at 7:45

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I would recommend using the ServerTimeZone setting in Sitecore.config, especially when you have servers set to UTC as often happens, or you have servers distributed in different timezones.

The doc site has a really good write-up on dates, UTC and timezones here: https://doc.sitecore.net/sitecore_experience_platform/setting_up_and_maintaining/utc/settings_supporting_utc_implementation

In case that link dies in future, the main comment is:

This setting specifies the server time zone that is used by the server to convert UTC time to local time, for example "GMT Standard Time". The value must be parsable to a valid Time Zone ID. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg154758.aspx If blank, Sitecore uses the operating system time zone. Default value: "" (use the operating system time zone)

Hopefully soon the platform will support allowing a User to choose their own preferred timezone. In the meantime I wouldn't try and work around this but rather rely on training, as others have suggested. It would be even more confusing if the dates across the different screens in Sitecore were all based off an inconsistent timezone.

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