Difference in timezones (self-host and desktop)

Questions
1

I have a self-hosted solution with +3 timezone set (GENERIC_TIMEZONE=Europe/Moscow). Also I’m testing the desktop client.

I run a simple Telegram process: get the message and create a Google Cal event from now 3 hours long.

Problem. My self-hosted solution and desktop client give 2 different time outputs in the formatiing Date & Time node. But the result in GCal is the same.

This is the node where I have different times:

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On self-host: UTC time
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On desktop: local time
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You can see the timezone difference (3 hours). However, the final result is fine. Looks like Google Calendar looks at the UTC date and my timezone. I can’t explain this difference.

2

In case you want to have a look at the workflow:

3

Hi @artildo, the GENERIC_TIMEZONE environment variable would only be used by the Cron trigger. Javascript will otherwise use the server (or desktop) time zone.

To get a timestamp in a specific time zone from the Date & Time node, you can use the To Timezone option:
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The Google Calendar node would convert the time stamp back into an ISO 8601 string when calling the respective API assuming a timestamp without time zone information is in the server (or desktop) time zone.

4

Hi @MutedJam, thank you for the answer.
I consulted the VPS support, the server’s timezone is UTC. Now I know the role of the GENERIC_TIMEZONE variable.

5

@MutedJam, I changed my server time to local via the timedatectl set-timezone <your_time_zone> command. The date command shows local time now

Nothing changed in the work of n8n. Still the same behavior. I even downed and uped the containers and rebooted the server.

I even set up a brand new server and changed the timezone before n8n installed

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6

Also, GCal timezone settings affects nothing: I put there any TZ, nothinhg happens to the start/end dates

despite this tooltip in GCal timezone option: “The timezone the event will have set. By default events are schedule on timezone set in n8n.”