[HOLD for payment 2022-03-22] Always display timezone of the other person in the chat window - Reported by @Santhosh-Sellavel

[mvtglobally]

If you haven’t already, check out our contributing guidelines for onboarding and email contributors@expensify.com to request to join our Slack channel!

---

Action Performed:

1. Open Any User Chat with the same timezone as yours. OR (Create two test accounts User A & B with the same timezone settings. And Open User B's chat logged in as User A )
2. Navigate to User Details by clicking on the chat header

Expected Result:

Timezone should be displayed at bottom of chat in all 1:1 chats.

Actual Result:

Currently timezone is displayed at bottom of chat only if your timezone doesn't match the timezone of the other person.

Eg. Sonia is in PST, Vic is in AEDT. So in the Sonia-Vic chat both see each other's local time at the bottom of the chat window:

Sonia is in PST, and Francois is in PST. So the Sonia-Francois chat doesn't display local time at the bottom of the chat:

Showing timezone in some cases but not in others feels unintentional. Let's make it consistent by showing the other person's local time at the bottom of a 1:1 chat in all cases regardless of the participants' timezones.

Workaround:

Click on the profile icon of the person you're chatting with to open their Details panel which lists their timezone and local time.

Platform:

Where is this issue occurring?

• Web
• iOS
• Android
• Desktop App
• Mobile Web

Version Number: 1.1.38-0
Reproducible in staging?: y
Reproducible in production?: y
Logs: https://stackoverflow.com/c/expensify/questions/4856
Notes/Photos/Videos: Any additional supporting documentation

Expensify/Expensify Issue URL:
Issue reported by: @Santhosh-Sellavel
Slack conversation: https://expensify.slack.com/archives/C01GTK53T8Q/p1643993593833769

View all open jobs on GitHub

[MelvinBot]

Triggered auto assignment to @sonialiap (AutoAssignerTriage), see https://stackoverflow.com/c/expensify/questions/4749 for more details.

[parasharrajat]

This is not a bug.

[iwiznia]

I know this is on purpose and we don't display the timezone if they are the same. But to me as a user, it looks broken. I don't know if the other person is in my same timezone or not. I rather see the timezone in every chat.

[sonialiap]

I don't think I've ever seen any chat/email systems display sender's timezone on the message timestamp. If we were to be the first to do that, it would be confusing to users since there isn't a precedent for this.

Currently we show the message timestamp in your timezone. If the other person in the chat is in a different timezone then their timezone is displayed at the bottom of the window.

Victoria is in AEDT, I am in PST so I'm shown her current time:

If they're in the same timezone as you, then their time isn't displayed. Nikki and I are both in PST:

I think it makes sense to either leave it as it is or display local time at the bottom of every chat (so my chat with Nikki would show her time too). @iwiznia do you think we should make this change?

[iwiznia]

I have no idea where some people are or if where they are it's the same time zone as where I am. I went to a chat and wanted to know if they could be online based on their time and did not see it there, to me it looked like a bug because all other chats seemingly have it.
So yeah, I think we should always show the other user's timezone, no matter if they are in the same timezone as you or not.

[sonialiap]

Made some tweaks to the original post

[MelvinBot]

Triggered auto assignment to @chiragsalian (Engineering), see https://stackoverflow.com/c/expensify/questions/4319 for more details.