Personalized timezones

AH 25/01/2023 14:21

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
In multinational/multiregional instances, such as Metadecidim, it is sometimes confusing that the system shows the times on the platform in a different timezone than what the user is on. It would be great if we could display the date/time in the user's local time.

Describe the solution you'd like
Everywhere where we show any dates or times, we would display them in the user's own timezone. This information is available through the browser APIs and would not require any additional configuration fields to be added for the user.

Describe alternatives you've considered
Using browser extensions but this is also not possible right now because the dates and times do not contain the timezone information with them.

Additional context
The date and time display and conversion should happen at the user's browser. This would allow the content served by the server to be cached either fully or partially.

If we add the timezone information to the dates and times displayed by the platform, the front-end code could calculate the correct date and time to display for the user and this would not cause any problems with the caching strategies.

This information is possible to provide to the browser using the <time> tag
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/time

Does this issue could impact on users private data?
No, as the calculation happens in the user's browser.

Funded by
No funding available right now.

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{"body":{"en":"<p><strong>Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.</strong><br>In multinational/multiregional instances, such as Metadecidim, it is sometimes confusing that the system shows the times on the platform in a different timezone than what the user is on. It would be great if we could display the date/time in the user's local time.</p><p><strong>Describe the solution you'd like</strong><br>Everywhere where we show any dates or times, we would display them in the user's own timezone. This information is available through the browser APIs and would not require any additional configuration fields to be added for the user.</p><p><strong>Describe alternatives you've considered</strong><br>Using browser extensions but this is also not possible right now because the dates and times do not contain the timezone information with them.</p><p><strong>Additional context</strong><br>The date and time display and conversion should happen at the user's browser. This would allow the content served by the server to be cached either fully or partially.</p><p>If we add the timezone information to the dates and times displayed by the platform, the front-end code could calculate the correct date and time to display for the user and this would not cause any problems with the caching strategies.</p><p>This information is possible to provide to the browser using the <code>&lt;time&gt;</code> tag<br><a href=\"https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/time\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/time</a></p><p><strong>Does this issue could impact on users private data?</strong><br>No, as the calculation happens in the user's browser.</p><p><strong>Funded by</strong><br>No funding available right now.</p>"},"title":{"en":"Personalized timezones"}}

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Ivan Vergés

més d'1 any

I'd like to add that we developed this functionality 6 months ago but we didn't PR to Decidim because we were told to that no new features would be accepted until the redesign is done.
However, we can create the PR at any time, se the work here:

https://github.com/openpoke/decidim/pull/11

Great!

But I think ideally we should not add any additional user configurations. I think this should rely on the browser APIs as described in the proposal which would also make it compatible with any caching solutions we may add in the backend.

I think we should do both, we did this for a client in Canada, they have multiple timezones, some of the use VPNs, maybe are in other timezones and they were very clear that they prefered to be able to choose it as automatic tools not always work well for everybody.
But yeah, the timezone issue is something that we are not full aware in Europe as most of us share the same one.

aproximadament 1 any

Possibly the user specific setting might make sense some times, such as adjusting some of the recurring tasks, e.g. when the users would receive their notifications. But other than that, I don't see it very useful, from the user interface perspective.

I understand that e.g. in Canada/US people might sometimes want to see the times in their home timezone, e.g. if they live at the east coast but are travelling for few days at the west coast. But even in that case, I wouldn't see it very disturbing for the users if the time changes when they are travelling. After all, they still have control over this from their computer/device settings, in case they want to adjust.

VPN should not generally interfere with the computer's timezone, it should remain the same even when behind a VPN.

I do understand the point, there are some edge cases where it might make sense to implement both. But I think the priority here should be to implement what works the best for most people and make the change in a sustainable way, e.g. in case we want to implement the mentioned caching solutions (that we already have for some of the cells).

Either way, the user-specific setting can be also implemented in a sustainable way from the caching standpoint, i.e. using the user defined timezone in the front-end rather than rendering the content in the correct timezone at the backend. But I think the priority (at least for this proposal) should be the automatic timezone based on the device's settings.

Sure, but this is as easy as have an option in the select, the default:

Show dates in this timezone:
"Detect automatically"
"User organization's timezone (Paris bla bla bla)"
"comprehensive list..."

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