DateTime in Dynamics

DateTime fields have some complexity added to them because these fields are stored in SQL server and are displayed in Dynamics as per the user timezone. 

Because timezone is not stored along with the DateTime filed in SQL; Dynamics always assumes that the date is in UTC date time format and if it needs to be displayed to the user then it is convereted from that timezone to the user timezone by the dynamics framework.

This understanding is important when working with DateTime fields as the data that one might see in the SQL database might be different and that is because the framework is converting the time from the user timezone to UTC.

The different timeZones that the system supports are defined as a TimeZone enum

•    Timezone::GMTMINUS0600CENTRALTIME;
•    Timezone::GMTMINUS0500EASTERNTIME;
•    Timezone::GMTMINUS0800PACIFICTIME;

There are a lot of functions in the DateTimeUtil class to hanlde the different time conversion scenarios the important ones are : 

• Convert to the logged in users TimeZone
  DateTimeUtil::applyTimeZoneOffset(myDateTime,DateTimeUtil::getUserPreferredTimeZone());
• Convert to a specific TimeZone
  DateTimeUtil::applyTimeZoneOffset(myDateTime,myTimeZone);