Time zone sending is the ability to configure time zones for people within your directory and then schedule an email to be sent out in relation to your recipients’ time zones.
With time zone sending, you can ensure your email is received during the most optimal time of your employees’ days!
To get started with time zone sending:
You will need to verify the data you have available within your Workshop account. To set up time zone sending, there are three types of configurations that Workshop supports:- IANA formatted time zone (America/Chicago, Australia/Brisbane) - this is the most accurate way to configure time zone
- Postal code + country (Workshop supports the various postal code formats seen worldwide and two or three letter abbreviations for country e.g US or USA) - this is pretty accurate
- Country - this is the least accurate, with this information we can set a time zone that is within the employee’s country but is not their specific time zone
See all of the formats that Workshop supports for these attribute values here.
To note, if you would like to use postal code you will also need to provide country.
Certain postal codes can be found in multiple countries and by providing country, Workshop
can ensure that the correct time zone is assigned to each person in your directory.
If you do not have the above data attributes available today in your Workshop
account, you can find instructions on how to get this data added here. In addition, feel
free to reach out to Workshop support for assistance.
Configure time zone sending in your Company settings:
Once that data is available in your Workshop account, a Workshop user with Admin level permissions must configure time zone sending within your Company Settings. This configuration will only need to be done once. To configure, you will navigate to the new time zone sending setting:
Upon clicking ‘Configure time zones’, the Admin user will be directed to a new page that will present the various configuration options. Please proceed with the configuration that matches the time zone data you have available in your account. Upon selection, the Admin user will be prompted to select the attribute(s) from their account that will be utilized.
Once your company’s time zone configuration is complete, your company settings page will update to reflect this new status.
To note, employee time zones are based on the accuracy of the data provided by your data source.
Some additional callouts on the time zone sending configuration:
- If your company chooses to use postal code + country, Workshop will use this data to locate the latitude & longitude for each person and then use that data to capture the time zone for that location - that time zone will be set on each person in Workshop.
- If your company chooses to use just country, Workshop will locate the earliest time zone for that country and set that time zone on recipients.
- As people are added to your Workshop directory, ensure that data is provided for your company’s mapped time zone attribute(s). If it is, the person’s unique time zone will be set at time of addition. If it is not, the person will be defaulted to the company’s time zone until Workshop receives the updated time zone attribute data for that person.
- Workshop uses attribute + attribute source to determine where to pull time zone data for the company’s directory.
- If you initially provide Workshop a CSV upload for time zone attribute(s) and then decide to send this data from your data source, you will need to update your time zone send configuration in Company Settings.
Sending an email in relation to recipients' time zones:
After time zone sending is configured within your company account, the ability to schedule an email in relation to recipients’ time zone is very easy!
When scheduling an email for later, the user will have the option to select ‘Send based on recipient time zone’. Upon enabling this option, the email will be sent out at the scheduled time within each recipient’s time zone.
When 'Send based on recipient time zone' is enabled and recipients are selected for the email, the user will be able to see a breakdown of the time zones associated with the email recipients. This includes recipients that will be defaulted to the company time zone.
- The 'Send based on recipient time zone' option is only available to users that have the ability to send an email from your company account.
- If there are recipients that do not have an associated time zone, these recipients will receive the email in the company’s time zone.
- If the scheduled time has already passed within some recipients’ time zones, the email will be sent to those recipients the next day at the scheduled time.
- Notifications to other channels -
- Text will be sent in relation to the recipient’s time zone
- Other notification channels will receive the post at the scheduled time in the company’s time zone.
Viewing a time zone sent email:
Once an email has been scheduled to send based on recipient time zones, the email will show in a 'Scheduled' status. Once one recipient has received the email, the email will move to an ‘In-progress’ status. Once all recipients have received the email, the email will move to a ‘Sent’ status.
To note, once an email has moved into an ‘In-progress’ status it cannot be edited.
Within a time zone sent email, users can view a new ‘Time zone’ tab on the email page. From this tab, a user can see what time zones are associated with all recipients of the email. As the email is being sent out, a user can track the delivery of the email as a status will be present for each time zone and will update once the recipients in that time zone have received the email.
This tab will be present for time zone sent emails in the following statuses - In-progress, and Sent.
Viewing analytics for a time zone sent email:
Email & campaign analytics for all time zones will display together in one view. Analytics will display in relation to the company’s time zone.
Additional FAQs:
- Can I use time zone as an attribute for creating distribution lists?
- Any data attribute you upload or sync to your Workshop account will be available to you when creating distribution lists. If your directory’s time zone is calculated by Workshop (in the instance of using postal codes + country or just country), the time zone data will not be available as an attribute for creating distribution lists.