Since Big Team Challenge is available worldwide and many challenge organisers have participants all over the globe, the complexity of timezones may require a little extra thought from organisers.
All timezone settings take daylight savings into account automatically, so challenge start and end times will be adjusted accordingly.
Each user has their own personal timezone (including admin users) - this is either automatically set when using the mobile app or chosen on the challenge website My Account > Settings.
The challenge start and end times are in your site's chosen timezone (this may be different to your personal user timezone). This is chosen when first signing up with Big Team Challenge and editable in the admin website under Settings (main menu) > Account > Settings.
Challenges start at 00:01 (12:01 am, just after midnight) and end at 23:59 (11:59 pm, just before midnight) in the challenge site timezone.
Start of the Challenge
When creating your challenge, you will select the challenge start date. This represents the first day when your participants can begin adding their steps/activity. If you select July 1 as the start date, everyone - regardless of where they are in the world - will be able to add all of their steps from July 1 onwards.
However, the user's timezone may affect the exact moment when they can begin adding their steps/activity. Let's take an example of a challenge site in the Europe/London timezone set to start on July 1.
Participants in the UK would be able to add their activity from 00:01 July 1.
Participants in a more easterly/earlier timezone (eg. Paris, Delhi, Tokyo) will need to wait a few hours into July 1 before they can add their activity (until it is 00:01 July 1 in London). When that time comes, the challenge will begin and they will be able to add/sync all of their steps for July 1.
Participants in a more westerly/later timezone (eg. New York, Los Angeles) will see that the challenge begins at some point on June 30 their time (when it is 00:01 July 1 in London) but will need to wait until 00:01 July 1 in their local timezone before they can add/sync their steps. They cannot add/sync their steps for June 30.
This ensures that everyone, regardless of their location, can add/sync all of their steps for the first day of the challenge.
End of the Challenge
What happens when the challenge ends depends on whether or not you have enabled the grace period.
With the grace period enabled:
Your challenge will end at the time specified and your grace period will begin. The default grace period is 24 hours but this can be extended. During the grace period, participants will be able to add all of their activity for the final day of the challenge. For example, if you end a challenge at 23:59 London time on May 31st, while the grace period is active all participants will be able to enter and sync all of their activity for the entire day of May 31st (in their local timezone). Once the grace period is over, the challenge is locked and no more distance can be added.
With the grace period disabled:
Your challenge by default ends at 23:59 on the final day of your challenge (in your challenge timezone). You can contact the support team to change this. After this point in time, no further distance can be added. Please take timezones into account if you have global participation as this may negatively impact people in different timezones. For example, if you end a challenge at 23:59 London time, people in Los Angeles will not be able to add a full day's worth of activity on the final day of the challenge.