Passing the correct timezone in start_time parameter

API and Webhooks
1

Hello,

I’m trying to create a webinar with a start_time in eastern time, I’m able to create the webinar successfully, but I’m having trouble passing the right timezone in my start_time string. I think the wording in the Zoom API documentation is a bit confusing.

Here is what I’m passing (using the zoomus Rails gem):

Zoomus.new.webinar_create(topic: ‘test title’, type: 5, start_date: “2018-04-24T17:00:00Z”) I’m also passing the host/user id. 

I understand this time format is in GMT: “2018-04-24T17:00:00Z” - with the ‘Z’ signifying GMT. In the documentation it says “In the format “yyyy-MM-dd’T’HH:mm:ss”, should be local time, need to specify the time zone.” - does this mean I need to also pass the separate ‘timezone’ paramater? Or is there a way to substitute ‘Z’ in the start_time string with the timezone I want (eastern time)? Should I just convert my time to GMT before passing it? Any suggestions/insight welcome.

Thanks!

2

@developer, We support two formats of start_time value,  this format - “2018-04-24T17:00:00Z” is GMT, and this format - “yyyy-MM-dd’T’HH:mm:ss” is local time.

For example:

  1. start_time=“2018-04-24T17:00:00Z”, timezone=“GMT+1:00”, so the local time is 2018-04-24 18:00:00

  2. start_time=“2018-04-24T17:00:00Z”, timezone=“GMT+1:00”, so the local time is 2018-04-24 17:00:00

3

In the above comment,
2. start_time=“2018-04-24T17:00:00”

4

Harris,

Thanks so much! The clarification of  timezome syntax is appreciated

5

An update on my solution: I decided the cleaniest, easiest way was to convert the time to UTC/GMT and not pass a timezone. In Rails, I did this the following way: “start_time: start_date.utc.iso8601” with 'start_date being a datetime object from the db. 

6

I just wanted to chime in; @harris_yang fixed my issue with sending meetings to the API using C#, however I would also like to join @developer in saying the API documentation is very confusing.

The documentation specifies the time_zone should be provided as one of the supported time zones in this list, which implies to me that I should pass the ID of the timezone.

When I used the timezone id to create a meeting, I would receive a meeting created response with the start_time in UTC and the time_zone displayed the correct id I passed, however when I reviewed the meetings on Zoom the times were offset by +1 hours.

Once I passed the GMT offset instead and converted the time to UTC and then passed the time in the ISO 8601 format, the meetings I created all lined up to the correct times.

7

Thanks @blamoureux for your feedback, we will update our documentation to make clear up any confusion.

8

@blamoureux we have updated this in our docs to make it more clear!

Thanks again for your feedback!