Standard vs Time Zone-Aware Delivery

A scheduled notification can be delivered in one of two ways:

Standard delivery sends it to everyone at the same moment: the date and time you pick.
Time zone-aware delivery sends it at that time on each employee's own clock, so 9:00 AM means 9:00 AM in London, Mumbai and New York alike.

The two also differ in when the list of recipients is worked out, which changes what happens if you edit the notification after scheduling it. Read this page before you schedule a time zone-aware notification.

At a glance

	Standard	Time zone-aware
When employees receive it	All at once, at the time you pick	At the time you pick, in each employee's own time zone, so over a span of up to about two days
When the recipient list is fixed	When it's sent	When you schedule it
Audience changes after scheduling	Picked up: it goes to whoever is in the audience at send time	Not picked up: it goes to the list fixed at scheduling
Editing after scheduling	Safe until it goes out	Don't edit. Cancel and create a new one. See Known limitation.
Employees with no time zone	Not applicable	Receive it at the time you picked, as on your clock
If the time has already passed for someone	Not applicable	Sent straight away, or skipped, depending on Send anyway instead of skipping
Available for	All notifications	Bot, email and WhatsApp notifications
How to choose it	The default	Turn on Send in user time zone on the Set schedule step

How standard delivery works

The notification is sent once, at the date and time you picked, to every recipient at the same moment. Employees in other time zones receive it at whatever their local time is then.

The recipient list is worked out when the notification is sent, not when it's scheduled. So if you change the audience, edit a custom audience's members, or employee data is synced in the meantime, the notification goes to whoever is in the audience at send time.

How time zone-aware delivery works

What "the scheduled time" means

You pick a date and time as it reads on your own clock, for example 6 November, 9:00 AM while you're working in India. Each employee receives the notification at 6 November, 9:00 AM on their clock:

Employee in	Receives it at (local time)	Which is, in India
Sydney	6 Nov, 9:00 AM	6 Nov, 3:30 AM, before your time
Mumbai	6 Nov, 9:00 AM	6 Nov, 9:00 AM
London	6 Nov, 9:00 AM	6 Nov, 2:30 PM
New York	6 Nov, 9:00 AM	6 Nov, 7:30 PM

Because time zones run from 14 hours ahead of UTC to 12 hours behind it, the first employees can receive a notification up to about a day before your scheduled time, and the last up to about a day after.

When the recipient list is fixed

To deliver on each employee's clock, Leena AI works out the full recipient list as soon as you schedule the notification, groups the employees by time zone, and queues a separate send for each time zone. That stored list is what each time zone's send uses later.

This is the key difference from standard delivery: changes made after scheduling, whether to the notification's audience, to a custom audience's members, or to employee data, don't change who receives it.

If the audience has no employees when you schedule it, the notification is cancelled automatically.

Where an employee's time zone comes from

Each employee's time zone comes from their employee profile, as synced from your HR system or provided by a channel that shares it, such as Slack. Employees with no time zone in their profile receive the notification at the time you picked, as it reads on your clock.

Check that time zones are filled in for your employees before relying on time zone-aware delivery.

When the time has already passed for someone

If the scheduled time is already past for an employee when their time zone's send is queued, for example because you scheduled it for today or chose Now:

Up to 40 minutes late, they still receive it straight away.
More than 40 minutes late, it depends on Send anyway instead of skipping:
- On (the default): they receive it straight away.
- Off: they're skipped. They appear under Failed in the report, with the reason Scheduled time is in past for timezone ….

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Using Now with time zone delivery
With Now, the scheduled time is the current time on your clock. Employees whose clock is already past that time receive it straight away (or are skipped, if Send anyway instead of skipping is off). Employees whose clock hasn't reached it yet receive it later, when it's that time for them. For example, sending at 10:00 AM from India reaches New York at 10:00 AM New York time, about ten and a half hours later.

Birthday and anniversary audiences

Birthday today and Anniversary today match employees on the send date in their own time zone, so they're a natural fit for time zone-aware delivery.

Set up a time zone-aware notification

Build the notification as usual. See Creating Notifications.
On Add details, finalize the audience. Check the employee count in the header.
On Set schedule, choose when to send, and pick the date and time as you want employees to see it on their own clocks.
Turn on Send in user time zone.
Decide whether to keep Send anyway instead of skipping on. Leave it on if everyone should get the notification even if their time has passed; turn it off to skip those employees.
On Review & test, send yourself a test, check every detail, then select Save and send.

Treat step 6 as final: once it's scheduled, the recipient list is fixed.

Known limitation: editing a scheduled time zone-aware notification

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Don't edit a time zone-aware notification after scheduling it
Editing a scheduled time zone-aware notification doesn't rebuild its recipient list. If you change the audience, the notification page shows the new audience and its count, but the notification is still sent to the employees in the list fixed when it was first scheduled.
To change anything, cancel the notification and create a new one. Choose Duplicate from its row in the list to start from a copy, make your changes, and send it. Then cancel the original.
Standard notifications aren't affected: they work out the recipient list when they're sent.

Cancelling

Choose Cancel from the notification's ⋮ menu in the list. For a time zone-aware notification:

Time zones that haven't been sent yet are stopped, and those employees don't receive it.
A time zone that's already being sent when you cancel may finish sending.
Employees who have already received it keep it. It can't be recalled from the dashboard.

The status becomes Cancelled if nothing had gone out yet, or Aborted if some time zones had already been sent.

Which should I use?

Use standard delivery when …	Use time zone-aware delivery when …
Everyone should get it at the same moment, such as an outage alert	Employees span several time zones and local time matters, such as a 9:00 AM greeting
Your employees are in one time zone	You're sending birthday or anniversary wishes
The audience or details may still change before it goes out	The content and audience are final when you schedule it
You'll schedule it well in advance and may need to edit it	You won't need to edit it after scheduling

Checklist for time zone-aware notifications

Finalize the audience and content before you schedule.
Check the employee count in the builder header, and send a test to yourself.
Make sure employees' time zones are synced.
Don't edit after scheduling. Cancel and recreate instead.
After it starts sending, check Attempted on the Report tab: it shows the actual number of recipients. See Reporting and Analytics.

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What's changing
We're changing time zone-aware delivery so that what the dashboard shows always matches what's sent:

More than 26 hours before the scheduled time, edits will be allowed, and every edit will rebuild the recipient list.

From 26 hours before the scheduled time until delivery finishes, the notification will be locked, because some time zones may already have received it. The only action will be Cancel.

The notification page will show the number of employees it will actually go to.

Until then, follow the limitation above. We'll update this page when the change is live.

Common questions

Why did employees in some countries get the notification a day early?
With time zone-aware delivery, employees in time zones ahead of yours reach the scheduled time first. Someone in Sydney gets a 9:00 AM notification hours before someone in India does.

I edited the audience of a time zone-aware notification. Who will receive it?
The employees in the audience when it was first scheduled, not the edited audience. Cancel it and create a new one with the right audience.

Does this affect recurring notifications?
Each run of a recurring series with Send in user time zone on follows the same rules for that run.

Does this apply to SMS?
No. SMS notifications don't have time zone-aware delivery. Use Send only during work hours to keep SMS within working hours instead.