Timezone Support in Next-Gen Knack Apps

What you'll learn:

How automatic timezone detection works for your users
When and how to enable timezone support for your app
Best practices for global teams and data management
API considerations and technical implementation details

Automatic timezone support transforms how your Knack apps handle date and time information:

Dates and times automatically show in each user's local timezone
No manual timezone calculations or confused users
Available for _new _apps on both Classic and Next-Gen platforms
Works automatically - no setup required

The Problem This Solves

Building apps that serve users across different time zones has always presented challenges. When someone in New York enters "2:00 PM" and someone in London views that same record, should they see "2:00 PM" or "7:00 PM"? Knack's automatic timezone support lets you focus on building great apps instead of wrestling with timezone calculations.

How It Works

For Your Users

Knack detects their timezone automatically
All dates and times display in their local timezone
They never need to do timezone math

For Your Data

Everything gets stored consistently behind the scenes
Reports and sorting work correctly
Data stays accurate across all timezones

Real-World Example

A project deadline set by someone in California automatically shows as:

5:00 PM PST (California user who set it)
8:00 PM EST (New York team member)
1:00 AM GMT (London team member)

Smart Data Handling

When Users Input Data

When a user enters a date and time (like "August 15, 2025 at 2:30 PM"), Knack recognizes this as being in the user's local timezone. The system then converts this information to UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) for storage, ensuring data consistency across your entire application.

When Users View Data

Knack automatically converts stored UTC data back to each user's local timezone. This means a meeting scheduled by someone in New York will automatically show at the correct local time for colleagues in London, Tokyo, or anywhere else in the world.

Consistent Data Integrity

While users see dates and times in their local timezone, your application maintains perfect data consistency. All timestamps are stored using UTC as the standard, which ensures that sorting, filtering, and reporting functions work correctly regardless of where your users are located.

Feature Availability and Rollout

Available Now: New Applications

Automatic timezone support is currently available for:

New applications on Knack Classic
New applications on Knack Next-Gen

New apps created after the feature launch automatically include timezone support, giving you immediate access without any additional setup required.

Coming Later: Existing Applications

While the initial release focuses on new applications, Knack is actively working on plans to extend automatic timezone support to existing applications. The Knack team will provide advance notice when timezone support becomes available for existing applications.

🚧
Copying/duplicating an app that doesn't have multi-timezone enabled will create a new app **without **multi-timezone support.

Tasks and Timezones

Knack's Tasks feature works seamlessly with automatic timezone support, but understanding how timezone handling affects task scheduling helps you set up reliable automated workflows.

How Task Scheduling Works

What You See: Task schedules and dates display in your timezone
When Tasks Run: Based on your app's timezone setting (found in App Settings)

Example Scenario

You're in Berlin, your app timezone is set to London:

You schedule a task for 3:00 PM
You see "3:00 PM Berlin time" in the interface
The task actually runs at 2:00 PM London time (same moment, different display)

This keeps your tasks running consistently while making the interface easy to understand.

Data Import and Export

Importing Data with Timezone Support

When importing data that includes date/time fields, you can specify which timezone that data was originally recorded in. This ensures your imported dates and times are interpreted correctly.

Why This Matters: If you're importing a CSV with meeting times recorded in Eastern Time, you can set the timezone to "Eastern Time" during import so it gets converted properly for users in other timezones.

Example: Importing event data from a spreadsheet where all times were recorded in Pacific Time - you select "Pacific Time" during import, and users in New York will automatically see those times converted to Eastern Time.

Exporting Data

Data exports default to your browser's timezone, ensuring exported information matches what you see in the app interface.