Event Time Zone

Question

My org has events that are often hosted online and participants who register to attend these events live all over the United States. When we create events we make sure to list the timezone in the "complete description" or "event summary" field inside the "info and settings" tab of event creation.

When event confirmation emails (Events - Registration Confirmation and Receipt (on-line) message template) are sent the event time is listed without any timezone info. This behavior makes sense because there is no where, in "info and settings" to configure timzone.

I've created a custom data field set that includes a timezone field and assigned the field set to events. However, I'm unable to add a token for that custom field to the message templates for events. Is there any way to add this information, or should I edit the template to remove any info regarding event time and, as part of the event creation workflow, require users to add the event times to the "confirmation email" text inside the "online registration tab"?

Thanks!

-tim

Using civi 4.4.19

Answer 1

Tim -

If the timezone for the event is always the one used by your organization (for example, if you're located in New York, it's always ET), you could modify the Smarty template for event receipts to include the time zone in the date formatting.

One example: {$event.event_start_date|crmDate}

could become {$event.event_start_date|date_format:"%A, %B %e, %Y %r %Z"}

which ends up as Saturday, January 16, 2016 08:52:00 AM EST

(see http://www.smarty.net/docsv2/en/language.modifier.date.format.tpl for the various date formatting options)

If your events are in various timezones, then yes, you'd probably have to capture that custom field in the template or perhaps include the timezone in the confirmation email text as you say.

Lesley