Current Local Time Indicator displays the current local time of your records based on 1 to 3 fields.
If you only do business in Europe for instance, you are fine with basing the indicator on just the Country field. If you do business in North America and just want to ignore the few states which have 2 time zones, you can just base it on the Country and State field. If you want to take into account those states, then you might want to base it on Country, State and County(See below Basing the time zones on 3 fields.
Here is a video on how to set it up.
WATCH A VIDEO!
WATCH A VIDEO!
How to add/edit time zones
Click in the indicator to open the Time Zone Settings window.
To add a time zone, click the Add... button and the Time Zone Setup window will pop up. Use Default as second criteria if you want any record which matches the first criteria (here the first reference field is set to country), to use the same time zone.
If on the contrary you need to use the second criteria, either type a value, choose a value in the drop-down list of your second reference field (here the second reference field is set to state) or of your third reference field if any (here, we did not set up a third reference field).
To edit a time zone, right-click it and choose Edit Time Zone or Edit (first reference field) (here, Country). Use the second option if you want to change the value of the first reference field. For instance, in this case if you don't use United States but rather USA, editing the Country United States to change it to USA will modify all the records currently entered under United States.
Basing the time zones on 3 fields
As explained before if you need to deal with 3 level of criterias, for instance Country, State and County, then choose Country as first Reference Field, County as second Reference Field and State as Third Reference Field. Why choose County as second and not third? Because the second and third fields are treated at the same level and not hierarchically. So you want the tool to check County first. If it finds a match, then it will stop there and not investigate the State. If it does not find a match, it will continue to State.
Data provided with the add-on
The add-on comes with predefined data based on 2 fields, Country and State. If your fields are named differently, it does not matter. As long as you choose the correct fields while setting up the tool (see video above), you'll be fine. The data file we provide with the add-on does not include all the countries of the world. We made it simple to add time zones, so if you're missing countries that are important to you, just add them.
If you already have a time zone field in your database and don't want to use the Country/State logic, set up the tool so that the First Reference Field is your Time Zone field and delete all items in the Time Zone Settings window then create your own items.
Sharing the data file on a network
In the Layout Editor, click F4 and select your Current Local Time Indicator. In the Properties pane, look under the Data group for the Data Folder property and click the ... button to set it up to what you want.
By default (as shown here), the data folder is set to:
- C:\ProgramData\Exponenciel\Advanced Layout Tools under Windows 7 or Vista
- C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Exponenciel\Advanced Layout Tools under Windows XP