Best practice forum (Archived)

Scheduled reports sending 1 hour early

 
Michelle Lamont
Scheduled reports sending 1 hour early
by Michelle Lamont - Monday, 23 June 2014, 4:27 PM
 

Hi,

Any ideas why the scheduled reports I have setup are sending exactly 1 hour ealier than the selected time?  For example, I have a report setup to send daily at 9am and I'm receiving it at 8am, another is set to send at 10am and I'm receiving it at 9am, etc.  I setup a new scheduled report last Friday and the interesting thing is the first occurrence was received at the correct time, but the next occurrence was received an hour early and has been an hour early since.

We've checked the server time which is correct, the Default Timezone in Location Settings is set to 'Server's Local Time' and in the Force timezone field it's set as 'Users can choose their own timezone'.  The Timezone field in my profile is set to 'Server's Local Time'.

Being exactly 1 hour early sounds very much like it's daylight savings related.  It's been sending an hour early since we started testing the scheduled report feature a few weeks ago.  Daylight savings ended in April 2014 so we're unsure whether it's the actual cause.

Are there other settings we should be checking?

Thanks

Michelle

me
Re: Scheduled reports sending 1 hour early
by George Angus - Monday, 23 June 2014, 7:32 PM
Group Totara

Hi Michelle,

Can you check http://download.moodle.org/timezone/ & see if the daylight savings start/end set correctly for their timezone this year? Is this happening anywhere else in the system? Which timezone are you using?

regards,

George.

Amir Elion
Re: Scheduled reports sending 1 hour early
by Amir Elion - Monday, 23 June 2014, 7:47 PM
 

Hi Michelle,

We experienced a similar issue in the past.

It was resolved after we noticed a php settings date.timezone on the server was set to the wrong timezone.

I suggest you check that.

Regards,

Amir

Ciaran Irvine (Core Developer)
Re: Scheduled reports sending 1 hour early
by Ciaran Irvine (Core Developer) - Monday, 23 June 2014, 11:11 PM
 

Hi Michelle,

also, which version are you currently on? There was a timezone bug in the scheduled reports that was fixed fairly recently (March) so if you are on a version older than 2.4.18, 2.5.10 or 2.6.0 then you will still be affected by that bug.

Michelle Lamont
Re: Scheduled reports sending 1 hour early
by Michelle Lamont - Tuesday, 24 June 2014, 4:58 PM
 

Thanks everyone for your suggestions.  Ciaran, we are currently using 2.6.0 so you might be onto something.

We'll upgrade and see if this fixes it.

Thanks, Michelle

Ciaran Irvine (Core Developer)
Re: Scheduled reports sending 1 hour early
by Ciaran Irvine (Core Developer) - Tuesday, 24 June 2014, 5:43 PM
 

Hi Michelle,

I think that bug was fixed in 2.6.0, so either the timezone daylight savings definitions are incorrect for your timezone, the PHP setting is incorrect, or there is still a bug somewhere. Which timezone are you using?

Michelle Lamont
Re: Scheduled reports sending 1 hour early
by Michelle Lamont - Wednesday, 25 June 2014, 4:32 PM
 

Hi Ciaran,

We ended up upgrading from v2.6.0 to v2.6.3 yesterday afternoon and now our scheduled reports seem to be sending at the correct time. Not sure what the issue was, but the upgrade seemed to fix it.

Thanks again

Michelle

Ciaran Irvine (Core Developer)
Re: Scheduled reports sending 1 hour early
by Ciaran Irvine (Core Developer) - Saturday, 28 June 2014, 8:48 PM
 

Well every Totara upgrade goes off to external sites to get the latest timezone definitions for every timezone (local governments meddle with timezones a lot more than people think) so if I had to guess I'd say the DST rules for your timezone were incorrect in the previous definition file before the upgrade.

Glad it is working now though, get in touch if you have any more issues.

Michelle Lamont
Re: Scheduled reports sending 1 hour early
by Michelle Lamont - Tuesday, 22 July 2014, 5:48 PM
 

Hi,

Unfortunately we're still experiencing the same issue with scheduled reports sending an hour early, I've just not had a chance until now to pick this up again.

In summary, it appeared that the upgrade we performed fixed the issue, but once again the first scheduled report emailed at the correct time but the next report the next day came through an hour early.

Between now and then I found that by forcing the timezone (selecting 'Australia/Sydney' in the 'Force timezone' field) the daily reports consistently came through at the correct time.  The problem with this is that our users aren't all in the same timezone, which obviously wouldn't be uncommon.  I know you can allow users to choose their own timezone, but at this stage we would rather not allow our users to edit their own profile.

What do you recommend the best approach is that will enable us to achieve what we need to achieve?  Should we add the 'timezone' field to Totara User Sync and set the correct zone in all user profiles that way?  If so, what should the Location fields be set to ('Default Timezone' and 'Force timezone')?

Thanks to everyone for their help to date.

Michelle