On Appian Cloud environments, the CONVERT_TZ() function returns NULL in phpMyAdmin when using timezone names, such as SELECT CONVERT_TZ(NOW(),'US/Eastern','Europe/Paris');.
CONVERT_TZ()
NULL
SELECT CONVERT_TZ(NOW(),'US/Eastern','Europe/Paris');
Appian Cloud environments do not support populating the MySQL timezone tables for the MySQL database included in the Cloud environment.
A product use case has been logged to the Appian Product Team for consideration to add this functionality in the product. Kindly note it is not Appian Support’s policy to disclose how or when a product use case will be implemented.
If you would like to use this functionality and would like to be added to the existing product use case (#1391 - Populate time zone tables in Appian Cloud MySQL database), please open a support case with Appian. Meanwhile, Appian Support strongly recommends that you transition to the following approach as a best practice:
Date and time values stored in the database should always be in GMT/UTC. Any conversion to a user's local timezone should be handled in the presentation layer (i.e., in Appian SAIL interfaces). If you have a use case to convert a user input, one approach is to use an online API to convert the timezone. For example, Google has the following API.
This article applies to all versions of Appian Cloud.
Last Reviewed: June 2020