Enabling Multi-Time Zone Support on Existing Apps

Why Enable Multi-Timezone (MTZ) Support?

Enabling MTZ on your app provides two key benefits:
Timezone-aware date and time handling. Once MTZ is enabled, all date/time values are stored in UTC and automatically converted to each user's local timezone for display. A deadline entered by someone in California at 5:00 PM PST will correctly appear as 8:00 PM EST for a team member in New York, with no manual calculations required.

Access to System Fields

Some system fields are only available in apps that have MTZ enabled. After migration, the "Created On" and "Updated On" fields will appear in your Table Settings when "Show System Fields" is toggled on. These fields automatically track when each record was first created and most recently modified — no record rules or workarounds needed.

What You Can Do with Created On and Updated On

These system-managed timestamps open up several practical capabilities:
Build a reliable audit trail.
Because Knack automatically records when every record is created and last modified, you have a built-in audit history without needing to configure record rules or maintain separate date/time fields. This is especially valuable for compliance-sensitive workflows, SLA tracking, and any scenario where you need to demonstrate when data was entered or changed.

Use timestamps in equations and formulas

Created On and Updated On behave like any other date/time field in the system, which means you can reference them in equation fields and formula fields. For example, you could calculate how long a record has been open by subtracting Created On from the current date, measure response times by comparing Created On to a "Resolved On" date field, or flag records that haven't been updated within a certain number of days using a conditional rule.

Take advantage of upcoming platform features

The Created On and Updated On fields lay the groundwork for future capabilities that will rely on system-managed timestamps. Enabling MTZ now ensures your app is ready to take advantage of these features as they're released, without requiring additional migration steps down the road.

How to Request the Migration

To enable MTZ on an existing app, submit a support ticket with the following information:

The app you'd like migrated. Include the app name or URL so the Support team can locate it.
Your preferred timezone. This will be set as the app's default timezone. Use a standard IANA timezone identifier (for example, America/New_York, America/Los_Angeles, Europe/London, or Asia/Tokyo). If you're unsure of your identifier, let the Support team know your city or region and they'll confirm the correct value.

You can submit a ticket through the Support form accessible from your Knack account.

What to Expect During the Migration
There are a few important things to be aware of:

• Your app will be unavailable while the migration runs.
• Plan accordingly and let your users know in advance if your app is in active use. Consider scheduling the migration during off-peak hours or a maintenance window. Support can duplicate your app and run a migration on the duplicate to give you a sense of how long this will take.
• Migration time depends on app size and complexity.
• The duration varies from app to app, so we cannot provide an exact estimate up front. For reference, in our testing, an app with medium complexity and approximately 2.2 million records completed the migration in about 15 minutes.
• A backup is created automatically.
  Before the migration begins, a backup of your app is made, so your data is protected throughout the process (data only, no assets).

After the Migration

Once the migration is complete:
Created On and Updated On system fields become available.
Navigate to any table in the Builder, open Table Settings, and toggle "Show System Fields" to on. You should now see the "Created On" and "Updated On" fields listed alongside your other system fields. These fields can be added to views, used in filters, and referenced in equations.

Date/time values are stored in UTC

All existing and new date/time values are stored in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and converted to the user's local timezone for display. This is handled automatically — your users don't need to change anything about how they enter or read dates.

The migration converts date/time and timer field values to UTC, but equation and formula fields are not recalculated as part of this process — they are tracked for statistics only during migration.

This means you may temporarily see inconsistent results in equation or formula fields after your app comes back online.

These fields will recompute automatically whenever a record is updated and saved. If you need to correct a specific record right away, simply open it and save it — the equation and formula values will recalculate on save.

API users should update their requests. If you use the Knack API, include the knack-client-timezone HTTP header in all requests with a valid IANA timezone identifier (for example, America/New_York). This ensures date/time values are correctly converted to and from UTC. If the header is omitted, the system falls back to the app's default timezone. See details here.