Cast Schedule Bug - Does restarting/rescheduling a cast affect stats?

[Anonymous]

We have discovered and reported a bug where all of our engagement program casts are going around 5 hours after they have been scheduled to go out.  This is playing havoc with our scheduling and means that some leads receive emails after business hours.  It appears that Marketo is sending the cast based on the EST timezone rather than the timezone of the cast, which is BST.

Support is suggesting that I reset the start date of the cast as being today.  However, I am concerned that this might mean that I lose all of my stats previous to this date in each stream.  I am also skeptical that this will solve the problem, as it is clear when looking at the engagement programs that the casts are scheduled to go at particular times BST.

1. Has anyone else seen this issue with their casts?  Particularly European/non-US users?
2. Is Marketo going to fix this?  Support won't tell me whether it has been referred to engineering even though they've agreed that this is happening.

Would appreciate a response from other users and from Marketo. 

[Anonymous]

Hi Erica,
very interesting... Did you set the timezone in your profile? 

Best regards

Steffen

[Josh_Hill13]

You have to be careful here.

Your Login Timezone - this is what you set for yourself. Most parts of the system display this correctly. This is only a calculation.

Your System (Instance)'s Timezone - this is the real timezone for everything that happens. If you look at your email performance report, it displays this System timezone.

Engagements are showing your login's timezone. So if you set it to go out at 10am EDT, it will go out at 3pm BST. And that's what is stamped on the Lead and Reports.

So you need to watch the Stream's Cadence which also shows the timezone YOU are in. So you'll need to set your Cadence time appropriately to go out at the time zone you INTEND.

[Josh_Hill13]

And no, you can Pause leads or deactivate content w/o affecting your stats.

DO NOT remove Emails, Programs, or Leads or you will lose that data.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Josh, but the casts are set to go out at BST (my location) and we have a different engagement program for each region, set to the appropriate time BST that maps to the local time.  This was all working and going out correctly until mid-March, which makes me wonder if something in the March release broke the timings.

Regarding the query about the stats, there are two possible issues:
1. I am switching entire engagement programs off some weeks (in order to execute other marketing campaigns).  I was wondering whether this somehow messes up the cast timing calculations when it then gets turned back on
2.  If I reset the cast start date, that is what was concerning me about the statistics, not pausing leads or deactivating content.

[Anonymous]

Also, just to confirm, both my location and the instance are set to Europe/London, as the reports show n the headings First Activity (Europe/London), Last Activity (Europe/London).