TeeZee™ TimeZones for Salesforce Configuration Guide

1622 23 April 2024

How to Set Up

  1. Install TeeZee™ from AppExchange into your Salesforce org
  2. Setup your Google Account and Google Maps API key
  3. In Salesforce App Launcher, search for ‘Settings’ to find the TeeZee configuration settings page
    • Enter your Google Maps API Key
    • Check the checkbox ‘Active TimeZone Callout’ so that TeeZee can make call-outs to the Google Maps API
    • Check the checkbox ‘Active OffSet Update’ to automatically update the GMT offset field
    • ‘Check the checkbox ‘Enable DST’ to allow TeeZee to update the GMT offset field when Daylight Savings Time is applied (note that this will update most records twice each year where TeeZee is managing the timezones)
    • Select how you would like the timezone presented to your users in the TeeZee Component – either TimeZone Name, TimeZone ID or no timezone information
    • Move the slider to ‘Refresh TimeZone Values’ to automatically update the GMT offsets of existing records where they do not match the master timezone list (e.g. if you were using a previous version of TeeZee before Daylight Savings Time support was added)

After making the setup changes, you can

  • Add TeeZee custom fields to Classic Page Layouts for Leads, Accounts and Contacts
  • Add the TeeZee Component to Lightning Record Pages for Leads, Accounts and Contacts
  • Allocate TeeZee licenses and Permission Sets to any user that would like to interact with the app

How To Use

TeeZee works as follows:

  • When a user creates or updates a standard address field on either a Lead, Account or Contact record, TeeZee will call-out to the  Google Maps API for the timezone for the new or updated address.
  • On a Lead record, the following standard address fields are monitored
    • Street
    • City
    • State
    • PostalCode
    • Country
  • On a Contact record, the following standard address fields are monitored
    • Mailing Street
    • Mailing City
    • Mailing State
    • Mailing PostalCode
    • Mailing Country
    • Other Street
    • Other City
    • Other State
    • Other PostalCode
    • Other Country
  • On an Account record, the following standard address fields are monitored
    • Billing Street
    • Billing City
    • Billing State
    • Billing PostalCode
    • Billing Country
    • Shipping Street
    • Shipping City
    • Shipping State
    • Shipping PostalCode
    • Shipping Country
  • After receiving the timezone of the relevant address, TeeZee will ascertain the offset from GMT for that timezone and display this in the lightning component.
  • If you are not using Lightning, the field Local Time Now is available to place on a Classic Page Layout.  This time displayed in this field is at page load.

Advanced Administrator Technical Information

The following information will be useful for your System Administrator in maintaining TeeZee in your salesforce organisation

  • Each user who would like to interact with TeeZee requires a license. You should allocate these licenses from Setup | Installed Packages and press the Manage Licenses link next to TeeZee app. If you require more licenses, please contact help@crmappslab.com
  • To comply with security best practices, we recommend installing the app for System Administrators only and then applying a Permission Set to any user who requires access. The TeeZee Viewer permission set is included with the app and provides access to all user-facing elements (fields and components)
  • The checkbox for Active TimeZone Callout triggers a background callout operation from Salesforce to Google Maps API using your key whenever one of the standard address fields mentioned above changes on a Lead, Contact or Account record or if there is value in the address field but the relevant  Timezone ID field on the record is blank.
    • Two callouts to Google are made to establish the timezone.  The first to ascertain the latitude/longitude of the address and the second to establish the timezone for that latitude/longitude.
    • If the callouts are successful, the relevant TimeZone ID for the address on the record will be populated.
  • The checkbox for Active Offset Update updates the relevant TimeZone GMT Offset for the address on the record with the current offset from GMT for the specified TimeZone ID. This will automatically change if you have the Daylight Savings Time (DST) setting enabled.
  • The app custom field called Local Time Now is a formula field that displays the local time based on the offset contained within the TimeZone GMT Offset field.
  • TeeZee maintains a master list of all timezones in use on records your org.  It does not require the use of Google Maps API to identify the change to and from daylight savings time, so no API calls are used to perform the GMT Offset update in applying or removing DST from existing records. 
  • If you wish to perform a bulk edit/save operation on current Lead/Account/Contact records, check out our Record Refresher app. Note that because TeeZee has callouts to Google, you will need to set the Batch/Bulk Size to 1, not 200.

Be aware that the normal day-to-day use of editing addresses on Leads, Contacts and Accounts in Salesforce to gather timezone data does not usually consume many Google API calls.  However, bulk updates to records with incomplete timezone data or with changed address information may result in a large number of Google API calls. 

At the time of writing, Google offers quotas that can mean that API usage is free up to a certain limit.  You should check your Google account for details, including setting billing reminders and alerts.