Activating MTZ in an Existing Database

If your business requirements change or you are upgrading to a new release of the system that now supports MTZ, you can still activate MTZ. Additional conversion and setup properly initializes existing records.

2 Define your own time zones with Multiple Time Zones Maintenance (11.21.22.1) or load default time zone data as part of the next step. Skip this step if it was done by the system administrator when users were defined. See here for details.

3 If you are activating MTZ as part of an upgrade from an earlier release, make sure you have executed the J1B6 Utility (11.25.16). Also, if you have never run the Initialize Engineer Address utility (11.13.25), the startup utility may display errors regarding missing address records. Execute 11.13.25 so each engineer record has a corresponding address record.

4 Execute the Multiple Time Zones Startup Utility (11.21.22.24) to activate MTZ.

In a database with existing records, the startup utility performs the conversions MTZ requires by:

• Initializing all customer, end user, and engineer address records so their associated time zones are set to the time zone of the current session, which is the domain time zone.

• Initializing two fields for each call record that define the date and time of the call in the end user’s time zone.

5 Execute the End User Time Zone Change Utility (11.21.22.20). In step 4, you initialized the end users to the domain time zone. You can reset the time zone for groups of end users selected by state, postal code, or country. This utility also updates the end user’s active calls by setting the end user open date and time appropriately.

To minimize the impact of time zone conversion, you can gradually convert end users.

This section highlights some details to consider when you activate multiple time zones in an existing database.

After activating MTZ, you may need to adjust custom reports that access dates and times. For example, if you manually adjusted call open times for time zone differences, these times are now in the domain time zone and must be converted before they are displayed. If your reports continue to display the date and time as stored, they do not reflect the time zone you expect.

A set of tables beginning on here lists how the system stores data in call-related date and time fields.

If you use the CIM interface to load data into calls or other tables affected by MTZ, you may need to modify them to accommodate time zone fields.

When you activate MTZ, dates and times on open calls are initialized to the domain time zone. However, the calls in the history table are not converted. After MTZ is activated, time data in these calls displays without conversion, regardless of which display time zone you specify.

When you move calls to history after MTZ is active, the system stores the domain time zone and end-user time zone values with the call. When you generate reports for these calls, the system converts the time data to the display time zone based on these values.

If you change your domain time zone or end-user time zone, the call history table is not affected. It retains the values for the call at the time you moved it to history.