What issues are there when running with a database that "does not fully support timezones"

Question

I recently installed CiviCRM 5.58.0 on wordpress, but under system status I am getting a warning that says:

The MySQL database does not fully support timezones. Please ask the database administrator to load timezone data.

Unfortunately we are on shared hosting so I can't load the timezone data myself.

What sort of issues (if any) will we have from this?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Some examples:

• To properly implement CiviEvent timezone support, the zones will need to be loaded. But since CiviEvent doesn't support timezones now then as a practical matter it's mostly that you won't be able to take advantage of any improvements there.
• Similarly activity datetimes don't currently support timezones.
• If you currently use trigger-based logging, you'll notice that dates on the other side of DST are off by an hour when looking at the contact changelog. The zones will fix that.
• There are some issues with the newer queue features.

It might be useful to know which hosting so we can update the survey at https://docs.civicrm.org/installation/en/latest/general/requirements/#mysql-timezones