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We have noticed that some incidents have a reference number that is a day ahead of the actual date that they are submitted.

Environment:

Incidents, Interfaces, Time zones
Oracle B2C Service

Resolution:

It is possible for incidents to be created with a reference number that indicates the next day. For example, an incident might be submitted on March 15, 2021 and the reference number begins with 210316 instead of 210315.

This can occur in applications that have multiple interfaces that use different time zones for each interface. If an incident has been submitted from an interface that has already begun the next calendar day, the reference number for that incident will reflect the date of that interface. Similarly, this will happen if an agent's staff account has the Time Zone field set and that agent submits an incident when the next calendar day has started for that timezone.  This is because the reference number field is affected for the entire database, not for each individual interface.

The reference number of each incident submitted after that will reflect that next day, regardless of which interface the incident was submitted from. Once the first part of the reference number has increased, all following incidents will reflect that date. As a result, each incident submitted, regardless of interface, will reflect the new date in the reference number.

For example, a database has two interfaces, one that is set for the eastern U.S time zone and one set for the western U.S. time zone (three hours difference). If an end-user submits an incident at just after midnight on February, 2, 2021, from the eastern U.S. interface, the reference number created will be 210202-000000. In the western U.S., it is only 9:00 p.m. on February 1. All incidents submitted from the western interface for the next three hours will have a reference number that begins with 210202, even though the calendar date in that area is still February 1. This is due to the incident submitted from the eastern interface.

Note: The actual date and time stamps in the discussion thread are all correct according to the specific time zone configurations of each interface. In addition, the incident creation date is stored using the time for the interface through which the incident was submitted. It is only the reference number that may have cases where the reference reflects a different date than the date the incident was created.