Daylight Saving Time in Connect

Daylight Saving Time (DST) is the practice of moving clocks forward by one hour during the warmer months to extend evening daylight and conserve energy. Typically, clocks are set forward in spring ("spring forward") and set back in fall ("fall back"), allowing for longer daylight hours in the evening and shorter daylight hours in the morning. Not all countries or regions observe DST.

This article walks you through how DST changes affect your work on Unmind, and what you can do.

How will DST impact my calendar?

Scheduled sessions

These will not be affected by the changes and your session times will be maintained for you and your clients regardless of your respective locations.

Instant book slots 

For any weekly recurring instant book slots you have set, the timing of this slot will move by 1 hour. This will be visible in your calendar already for instant book slots beyond the DST date, so if you navigate forwards in your calendar to a date beyond the date of the DST change, you will be able to see the new time of any instant book slots.

Here's an example to explain further

If DST ends on Sunday, 27th October 2024 and you have a weekly recurring slot on Wednesdays at 10am, your instant book slot will be set as 10am for Wednesdays prior to the DST change and be set to 9am for any weeks following the DST change.

This means that your instant book slots may not reflect your desired availability. As clients can book with you ahead of time, you may receive bookings for 9am for weeks following the DST change.

Weeks prior to DST taking effect

Weeks after DST taking effect

At the point DST takes effect, there will be no further updates to the time of your instant book slots i.e. this slot that moved to 9am will stay at 9am.

To maintain your desired availability, we recommend you review and update instant book slots as appropriate.

Displayed Timezone

All calendar events reflect your current timezone. At the point DST comes into effect, the timezone of your calendar will change and therefore events will show based on this updated timezone. Note, there will be no change to the event times at the point DST comes into effect.

For example, if you’re in New York (GMT-4) and you have an appointment scheduled for Mon, 4 November 2024 at 5pm, this is what you will see on your calendar:

Why is this happening? 

Unmind uses Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) for the calendar to help avoid issues with daylight saving time and changes in timezones.

When events are created, they're converted into UTC, but you'll always see them in your local time.
However, this means that when Daylight Saving Time changes, events created before the change might be in the wrong time zone.

List of countries observing DST