Time Zones

[Bekah]

When we view a customer our sales wants to know the time difference. I have zip codes and area codes (and state and city) for the customer. How do I calculate their time zone? Would I use a calculation? to display above the customer name.

The conversations look like this in the office ... "okay, Joe is in Hawaii. What's their time?" Someone will say "I think they are 3 hours behind." Someone else will say, "so it's 9am here so it's 6am there? or is it 12 there? What is behind and what is ahead mean?" See my problem?

it doesn't need to update or give the exact time - just give them an idea of the time difference bwtween us. IS this possible? I have no idea how to approach this problem. Thank you. oh, and i also have UPS zone if that can be used somehow. I'd like maybe something like, "This customer is 3 hours ahead so if its 8am here it's 11am there."

[QuinTech]

Why don't you search the forums before posting? (Just kidding. )

If this map and this map are to be trusted, there doesn't seem to be a correlation between area code and time zone. UPS zones, i can't find a map for, but i would guess those run along state lines, and the time zones don't seem to.

It does look like there is a correlation between counties and time zones. I know that the USPS sells CDs that identifies all Zip codes by county (and other attributes), so you could use something like that to determine the county, then use the county to determine the time zone. Since it appears there are only a few instances where one state has more than a handful of counties in a separate time zone from the bulk of counties, it might not be a lot of work to enter the time zone for this data file. Of course, some data vendor may have already done all this.

In any case, i think you're going to come down to a lookup table as your best bet.

HTH,

Jerry

[Bekah]

Hi Jerry,

Well I was a bit overwhelmed and have continued searching. It seems someone else MUST have had this same need - to know what time it is before we call a Contact. But it seems this is a very very large subject.

I found this program which looks very easy to use and it's free. I would like to somehow make this program open from within FileMaker (is this possible do you think)? I don't want the silly clocks on the desktop, just open the box so we can select city and display the time.

If I can accomplish that, I think I'll buy the multiperson license which is like only $20 which includes yearly updates. Can someone check it out and see if they think it might work?

You can click 'united states' and then it displays each city and you can select that way. Wish I could just get the data as database but oh well.

Time Zones for PCs

Would I use a script Send Event to open this program from FM? I've never tried opening another program inside my layout before. But this looks like it might work for us. ps. I found one which gives ascii and hml of the world but it costs $400.

I also found this ascii timezone which also has zip codes, area codes, county as well as time zone (only for US though). I think this might work also. I don't want another program to run - I want to use this data within FM as a table.

ZipList5 Plus

If anyone else is interested and wants to try out these products and give feedback I'd appreciate it.

[Lee Smith]

Hi,

There is a File in the Sample File Area by Chopper that may be helpful to you. To take a look at it click

Here

Lee

[QuinTech]

Hi, Bekah. That second link you found looks promising. Assuming the data is good, i'd say purchasing that one time should fix you forever -- Zip codes just don't change that much. Just dump it into a FM file, link the Zip codes, and you should be good to go.

J

[Bekah]

hi there Lee. I appreciate the link. I tried it but don't understand how to adjust GMT. and I was hoping to have it all in filemaker. but i really appreciate your help very much. chopper seems smart and I'm sure this is wonderful for more advanced people than me. i will study it also.

Jerry, thank you. I think i'll go for this as text database method. I wanted all this other stuff too so i can verify correct zip codes and stuff so this might give me everything i need. My only question left is ...

if I don't get the updates (can't afford it) will that throw off the time? does everyone in US go to Daylight savings together? If so it won't matter because the time DIFFERENCE will remain same and that's all we care about. I can display calculation just saying how many hours ahead or behind they are from us. i won't be showing their actual time anyway ... I don't think.

anyway, I'm going for it. I may use the first program as link :? if someone is international. wish me luck since I don't know what i'm doing yet. and thank you so much for helping.

[QuinTech]

There are parts of Indiana that use DST, and there are some that don't. They're a very weird people there. There are, i think, some other states that don't use DST at all. Maybe you can make a few fields:

TimeDifferenceOctThruMar

TimeDifferenceMarThruOct

So that you can account for different time discrepancies at different times of year. Then make your calculated time difference based off some combination of that and Month ( Get ( CurrentDate ) ) .

J