How to convert to local time in Slack?

August 28, 2018 7:25 AM

I would say that 90% of my team is remote. One thing we've sort of successfully worked through just by knowing where people are is just memorizing time zone differences. In Slack is there a plugin where if I type in 9AM EST or something similar (my time zone), it converts it to the local timezone? Similar thing to Google calendar would be nice as clients will say "1PM" and I'm looking to figure out what 1PM PDT means. It is driving me crazy.
posted by geoff. to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

There are a few options. This one seems actively maintained: Channel Time.

You type in /time and your message, and it converts the timestrings in it to each users timezone.
posted by dis_integration at 7:39 AM on August 28, 2018

If you click on the user name in a conversation slack brings up a dialog that says something like "10:23 local time"

I think this is a built in feature.
posted by bdc34 at 8:47 AM on August 28, 2018

(Also, if you are designing something and are going to send the words "local time " to someone who might be out of your timezone you are probably ambiguous in your communication. Try "at their location" or "at your location")
posted by bdc34 at 8:50 AM on August 28, 2018

I work with people from literally all over the world (writer in Japan, subeditor in Tanzania, web dev in Montreal, social media team member in Greece) and our organization just uses UTC. It's something we all calculate in our heads before suggesting a time on Slack.

We also use Doodle Polls, where you can just suggest a time in your own time zone, and Doodle does the rest.

Anyway, when working across multiple time zones, defaulting to UTC seems the most considerate, and also the most accurate -- pretty soon the UK, for example, will change back from summer time which means GMT will no longer sync with UTC (or maybe it will sync?)
posted by JamesBay at 8:52 AM on August 28, 2018