Google Calendar Displays Wrong Times

[ronkc]

I'm a new user to PowerChurch, so I'm hoping the solution is simply something that I'm overlooking.

I've created a recurring event for our Sunday morning services (9:00am each week). When I sync to Google, it displays the first service as 9:00am, but the rest of the meetings show as 10:00am. By the way, the times are correct each week on the PowerChurch calendar.

Because it's off by 1 hour, I'm assuming the problem has something to do with us being on Central Time. However, I have the Googler calendar set to Central Time as well.

[Tracy]

Did you create the calendar, sync them at 10am, or with the Eastern timezone, then change things and re-sync?

[ronkc]

No, I only added them once, and synced afterwards (no changes after I created the events). A little bit ago, I created a "test" event in April at 9am, then ran the sync utility. The Google calendar shows the test event at 10am.

Then, I added another "test" event for today at 9am, ran the sync, and it shows correctly in Google (9am).

So, it seems as though it's only events in future months that have this problem. That doesn't make any sense to me. Would you like me to try any other scenarios?

[ronkc]

Is there a way to set time zones in PowerChurch? (I should have asked this first)

[Tracy]

Are you noticing the problem begins happening after March 14, 2010?

[ronkc]

That appears to be the case. So, does that mean Daylight Savings Time is causing the problem?

[Tracy]

Looks to be. I'm not sure if it is a Google Calendar issue, or how the events are created into Google Calendar.
I'll get this investigated. Thanks for pointing it out.

[Tracy]

From scanning the internet, it looks like this is a Google Calendar problem. I'm not sure if Google is going to fix the issue online, as they have done in the past. I did not pick up from the Google API documentation I need to specify the times accordingly by Daylight Savings. If it is something that needs to be addressed by PowerChurch, the timezone of the online calendar will be crucial to the solution. Parts of Arizona do not change the clocks for Daylight Savings. There is also the rest of the world to be aware of.

[ronkc]

I may have found a "work around"...at least for now. This may not work for folks that sync to a mobile phone, etc...not sure.

I went to "Settings" in the Google Calendar. In the time zone setting, I checked the "show all time zones" box which gave me a lot more choices in the time zone dropdown box. I then found that "Central Time - Regina" fixed the problem in my calendar. I'm assuming that Regina is a place that doesn't observe DST. I know that folks in Mountain Time can choose "Mountain Time - Arizona" since Arizona doesn't observe DST. Not sure what to advise those in other time zones...but I'm sure trial and error would work (worked for me).

Hopefully Google will address the issue in case my quick fix causes other problems.

[jmichell]

I don't think this is a Google problem.
I use Google calendar myself, and the recurring items that I have set for 10 am Saturdays are correct before and after March 14th.
But the recurring items we have set up on Powerchurch (choir practice is at 7 pm every Thursday) show as starting one hour later after March 14th.
So it appears that the problem is in the Powerchurch sync program.
Is that your understanding, Tracey?
John

[NeilZ]

I don't think this is a Google problem.
I use Google calendar myself, and the recurring items that I have set for 10 am Saturdays are correct before and after March 14th.
But the recurring items we have set up on Powerchurch (choir practice is at 7 pm every Thursday) show as starting one hour later after March 14th.
So it appears that the problem is in the Powerchurch sync program.
Is that your understanding, Tracey?
John

John,

Let me verify:

1. Items you enter directly into Google using your browser have the correct time.
2. Items entered in Powerchurch events, then synced to Google show the incorrect time after March 14th on Google, but show the correct time in Powerchurch

If, as I assume, the Powerchurch sync is using XML uploaded to Google to update the calendar, then unless Powerchurch is making time changes (and I don't believe it is), its a time issue on the Google import end which uses the Google APIs you don't use when directly accessing a Google calendar.

[jmichell]

1. Items you enter directly into Google using your browser have the correct time.
2. Items entered in Powerchurch events, then synced to Google show the incorrect time after March 14th on Google, but show the correct time in Powerchurch

You understand my post correctly.
I don't know how pcsync or Google import works. I'll leave that to the Powerchurch support folks.
John

[Tracy]

Reading the documentation for the Google Calendar API, there is no set way to send the Start and End times. In the examples they specifically use the Universal Time Coordinate (UTC or Zulu). I found a recently added example that did not use any offset or timezone. In my testing this correctly uses the Timezone the calendar is set to, even after Daylight time changes. The code changes need to be verified that I didn't spell a variable wrong, and it still runs for the hosted ONLINE clients. We also do not release Maintenance Releases (MR) on Fridays. I can say with some certainty this will be in a MR before the Daylight time change happens in March.

[NeilZ]

Reading the documentation for the Google Calendar API, there is no set way to send the Start and End times. In the examples they specifically use the Universal Time Coordinate (UTC or Zulu). I found a recently added example that did not use any offset or timezone. In my testing this correctly uses the Timezone the calendar is set to, even after Daylight time changes. The code changes need to be verified that I didn't spell a variable wrong, and it still runs for the hosted ONLINE clients. We also do not release Maintenance Releases (MR) on Fridays. I can say with some certainty this will be in a MR before the Daylight time change happens in March.

So its an issue with the way the XML is formatted ?? Interesting ...

[Tracy]

The difference is between

Code: Select all

<gd:when endTime='2010-05-03T13:30:00.000Z' startTime='2010-05-03T13:00:00.000Z'/>


and (the one which works)

Code: Select all

<gd:when endTime='2010-05-03T08:30:00' startTime='2010-05-03T08:00:00'/>