ics file not dealing with clock change - workaround?

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone,

I've created a series of 12 webinars where one 'parent' webinar deals with invites and 12 'children' webinars deal with reminders and confirmations.

For all my webinars taking place BEFORE 29th March (which is when the clocks change), the ics file works fine, ie it saves in the calendar in the right time slot.

For all my webinars taking place AFTER 29th March, the ics file saves the webinar meeting request one hour late (ie at 1.30pm instead of 12.30pm).

I am using GotoWebinar. I can see that until 29th March, the timezone used is GMT. After 29th March, the timezone is called BST (and I cannot change it - when I try to edit it, it shows as being GMT).

Has anyone else experienced this?

Marketo, do you have any solution for this please?

Thank you,

Sophie

[Josh_Hill13]

I wonder if this is because BST hasn't occurred yet. Did you try setting your clock to BST to see if the calendar adjusted? Most computers auto-adjust now and would likely make the fix on that day.

I doubt Marketo can do much about that since ICS is a standard file format.

[Anonymous]

Hi Josh,

Thanks for much for chiming in. I agree with you, Outlook is well equipped with dealing with Daylight Saving Time - I can see a note in my 'Date and Time' settings window announcing that Daylight Saving Time will begin on 27th March 2016 and that it will 'automatically adjust clock' for Daylight Saving Time.

My timezone is set to the right slot (ie: UTC, which is GMT, London UK time), and the other time slots are listed as UTC +1, +2, etc... so there isn't an option to choose BST.

My guess is that my computer and Outlook are indeed coping well with the Daylight Saving change, but something in the ics file isn't.

Plus, if we go down the route of 'it'll auto-adjust on the day', I take the risk that people will take other meetings on the actual slot needed for my webinar. Example: my webinar appears in my attendees' calendar at 9.30am. Some of them accept other meetings at 8.30am. Once the ics file supposedly auto-adjusts and moves to 8.30am, it will appear as double booking with the other meeting.

I don't think that it's right anyway for a meeting to appear at the wrong time slot for weeks while we're waiting for a clock change.

I've created a ticket with support and they're following it up. I'll update this conversation if and when it gets solved. Thanks!

[Jamie-Carey]

Hi Sophie! Did you ever receive an answer from Support on this?

[SanfordWhiteman]

Marketo ICS files use UTC time (Zulu).

When an ICS file is imported, any display decisions are the responsbility/fault of the calendar app or local setup.  UTC is the universally correct point in time.

So the only question is whether the ICS file is miscomputing the UTC time based on the instance time. This is easy to see by looking in the file at the DTSTART value.

[Jamie-Carey]

how do you look at the file Sanford?

[SanfordWhiteman]

Download the ICS file to your hard drive and open it in a text editor (like Notepad or Wordpad).