Does salesforce.com have a timezone field that is DST aware?

Question

I am mailing out reminders to potential customers and the time is getting converted to our servers timezone EST (I think it is currently using EDT though as appropriate). I need to store the timezone for the potential customer and translate the time into their current timezone.

I can store the offset but I am worried about daylight savings time. I can always store a non-DST offset but that causes issues when the signup appointment is scheduled before DST but occurs after DST.

Ideally I would like to store a timezone and have salesforce translate the datetime to that timezone accounting for DST if necessary. How can I do this?

Answer 1

Salesforce has a mechanism which will set automatically to DST. You don't need to change or alter time for any customer. Salesforce will automatically convert the time to their local time zone. The DST will also change from March 11 if you're in the US. The time will auto-adjust for you as you need it to be. But, if you set the time as standard time, it will not adjust to DST.