Setting default time zones for ECM servers

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 In the 100Custom.xml files for Workflow Server and Workflow Center, you can add or modify the ecm-server-default-timezone configuration setting that is used to set default time zones for ECM servers.

About this task

When you work with ECM documents on an IBM® Business Automation Workflow server that is connected to an ECM server, and that ECM server does not provide time zone information in date/time properties, you may notice that the values for these fields are incorrect in regards to the time zone. This issue occurs when time zone information is not provided by the ECM server, which causes the IBM Business Automation Workflow server to assign its own time zone to the date/time values. If the ECM server and IBM Business Automation Workflow server are in different time zones, the wrong date/time values will be displayed.

Using the ecm-server-default-timezone configuration setting, you can explicitly provide a time zone offset for date/time property values arriving from the ECM server (which does not provide an explicit time zone). You can set this configuration option with the expected time zone returned by the ECM server. The server configuration field value must be formatted to be compatible with the values accepted by the java.util.TimeZone.getTimeZone(String ID) method, such as America/Chicago or Europe/Berlin (as described in the topic Class TimeZone).

If you find that you need to change the value of the IBM Business Automation Workflow ecm-server-default-timezone setting, you can override the value by adding or updating the setting in your 100Custom.xml files. For example, to add the setting to a 100Custom.xml file, you would add the following elements under the <properties> element and modify the value as needed:

<server merge="mergeChildren">
   <ecm-server-default-timezone>America/Chicago</ecm-server-default-timezone>
</server>

For information about the individual 100Custom.xml files that need to be updated and their locations, see the topic Location of 100Custom configuration files.

However, to consistently and reliably change the value of the settings in all of the 100Custom.xml files in your Business Automation Workflow deployment environment, it is recommended that you use the updateBPMConfig command as described in the following procedure:

Procedure

  1. Stop the servers for Workflow Server and Workflow Center.
  2. Start the scripting client in disconnected mode as described in the topic updateBPMConfig command.
  3. Run the following commands to simultaneously update all affected servers (but first modify the value as needed): 
    wsadmin> AdminTask.updateBPMConfig( [ '-create', '/server' ] )
wsadmin> AdminTask.updateBPMConfig( [ '-create', '/server/ecm-server-default-timezone', '-xNodeValue', 'America/Chicago' ] )
wsadmin> AdminConfig.save()
  4. Restart the servers.

Results

The recommended way of updating the 100Custom.xml files is by running the updateBPMConfig command. However, if the updates are unsuccessful, you can manually update the files by following the steps in the topic Creating a 100Custom.xml configuration file.