Introduction
Today, we're excited to announce that we have built in timezone translation for both Salesforce sync, and CSV imports.
For a little background, you've probably seen timezones expressed in different formats, such as PST and EST, or GMT-8, or even America/Los_Angeles.
There are many different formats used in the world, and the most important thing is being able to translate them to a correct local time so that they are useful for things like timing your calls and emails.
We'd like to show you today how Outreach translates a number of different formats to the IANA format, which we use to display local time to the user, and of course for queueing up tasks at the right time.
The Demo
To import a CSV into Outreach, make sure you include your timezone data in a column. Then, as you start the import, ensure you map all the fields (including timezone), and as you complete the import process, Outreach will attempt to convert your timezone to our standard format.
When complete, you will see the finished results of your import, and if successful, you will see the local time presented on the prospects.
Timezone translation works the same way in the Salesforce Plugin when syncing data in. Admins can map the timezone fields for both leads and contacts, and once configured, Outreach will bring this information in on net new records, or as updates to existing. As a result, you and your users will have very helpful local time information.
Additional Information
Do be aware that some organizations store timezone data in non standard formats, which we may have challenges interpreting. If this does happen, we will just ignore that time zone value to ensure we can complete the record creation without errors.
This feature is live now, and we encourage you to try it out so you can time your communication better, and get better analytics by persona around what local time is most effective for calls and emails, respectively.
