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Update your Azure WebApp to use your timezone

· 2 min read
Luke Murray
Luke Murray
Author

By default, the timezone in Microsoft Azure defaults to UTC (Universal Coordinated Time) as a standard, as a universal and consistent timezone, this makes sense - however when troubleshooting issues or attempting to schedule jobs, having the time in UTC may add additional confusion. An Azure WebApp is no exception to UTC as a standard, however, this can be changed.

As I am in 'New Zealand', I will be setting my WebApp (which is hosted in Australia East) to NZ time from UTC.

I will be using a Windows-based App Service, for this article.

Find the Timezone​

The Azure App Service uses the same naming standard as Windows.

  1. To find the correct name, run the following PowerShell snippet on a Windows PC:

    Get-ChildItem -Path 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Time Zones' | Select-Object PSChildName

Windows Terminal - Timezone

This will list all the compatible Timezone names, because I am in New Zealand, I now know that: 'New Zealand Standard Time' is the correct syntax.

For future reference, I have exported the list of compatible timezones into a CSV file below:

Set the Timezone​

Making a change to the Application Settings, which includes setting the Timezone will restart the WebApp app pool, so make sure this is scheduled at a time it is acceptable for an intermittent outage.

  1. Log in to the Azure Portal
  2. Find your Azure WebApp and open it up
  3. On the left-hand side Blade, underneath Settings, click on Configuration
  4. Click on + New Application Setting
  5. Type in the following Key/Value pair: WEBSITE_TIME_ZONE | New Zealand Standard Time
  6. Click Ok
  7. Click Save to confirm and save the change.

Azure WebApp - Timezone

Test the Timezone​

  1. Log in to the Azure Portal
  2. Find your Azure WebApp and open it up
  3. On the left-hand side Blade, underneath Development Tools, click on Console
  4. Type the following into the console:
  • Time
  • Date

These commands can help you confirm, that the Date and Time now your Timezone, the Azure WebApp logs etc will now be updated to use your timezone.

Azure App Service - Console