Howto:UTC offset - Vcom AS - Partner App

Product Name

Vcom AS UTC offset

Vendor

Vcom AS is an innovaphone distributor and development partner, building Apps for the innovaphone platform. With deep expertise and extensive experience in communication and access control, Vcom AS develops custom, specialized solutions tailored to each customer - including, not least, cloud-based products alongside on-premises and hybrid deployments. Operational reliability and cyber security are top priorities, and Vcom AS's solutions are trusted by organizations that take security seriously. Sales go through installers, resellers, and system integrators across the country.

Vcom AS - About us

Description

UTC offset is tailored for systems that frequently travel between timezones, in particular - the maritime sector. It provides a simple UI for changing time/timezone individually by types of devices (eg phones, gateways etc), or all grouped together. The recommended use (also the default configuration) is to allow for time modifications on Phones/DECT (devices that displays time) only.

Simple but yet advanced if terms of configuration options, threshold parameters etc, making it suitable for most systems. It supports maintaining the correct time despite complete loss of time/NTP by overriding the system base time (UTC) manually. The auto-correct feature will automatically correct devices with time drift when NTP is not available.

UTC offset has no independent time source of its own - it calculates expected device time, drift detection, and the dashboard's UTC clock from the clock of the App Platform instance it runs on. If that platform clock is itself wrong (most commonly right after a cold boot on hardware with no battery-backed clock, before its own NTP sync completes), the dashboard's own displayed time will be wrong too - but the app detects this and refuses to push a wrong absolute time to any device, so devices themselves stay protected rather than being set incorrectly. Automatic corrections simply pause (a banner informs the admin) until the platform's clock is corrected, either automatically once NTP is reachable, or immediately via the manual UTC override.

Vcom AS - About UTC offset

Functions

The following functons are available for user after standard installation with default settings:

• Dashboard showing UTC time and local time for phones and dect phones
• Manual local time override
• Manual UTC time override
• In background automatic correction of devices whose clock or timezone configuration has drifted
• Audit log of every timezone change, who made it, and when
• Settings availible for dashboard layout, analogue/digital clock display and light/dark background color (from myApps Profile settings)
• Automatic protection against pushing an incorrect time to devices if the App Platform's own clock looks unreliable (eg right after boot, before NTP has synced), with an on-screen warning while this is active

The following functions can be switched on/off from manager “configure” panel in Settings app (PBX plugin). Enabled functions will be availible for user.

• Dashboard alternatives for views of every registered device's local time or grouped by device type (Phones, Gateways, Virtual Appliances)
• Enable/disable set of timezone for a whole device category with one action or applied directly to each device
• Enable/disable automatic correction of devices whose clock or timezone configuration has drifted
• Enable/disable custom editing of timezone list (editable POSIX/IANA entries), not limited to a fixed preset
• Enable/disable audit log of every timezone change, who made it, and when
• Enable/disable manual UTC time override for testing
• Enable/disable Optional push notifications to myApps users for timezone changes, auto-correct actions, manual UTC override changes, and NTP/platform clock issues
• Settings for time check interval, drift warning and UTC offset adjust steps (hours and minutes)

Multi-PBX ready

No known restrictions

Cloud ready

No known restrictions

Supported languages

• English, German

Licensing

Innovaphone service license

Service(vcomas-utcoffset)

Prerequisites

UTC offset requires the innovaphone Devices app and the DevicesApi; the manager plugin's Add/Edit App panel discovers deployed Devices API instances and offers the required grant as a checkbox.

Versions

Compatible innovaphone firmware versions

• innovaphone 15r1 or higher

Application versions used for interop testing

• innovaphone 16r1

Configuration

1. Install UTC offset via the "app installer" Settings plugin (preferred), or the AppStore (instance must be manually created)
2. In the UTC offset Settings plugin, click "Add an app" to create the pbx app object. Assign template and give access to the DevicesApi
3. Click "Configure" to set default values for the user visibility and the background service.
4. To assign an installed license, enter the amount (normally 1) in the app object "Licenses" option

Manager "Configure" panel

The following settings are available from Settings app, UTC override plugin, Configure panel.

Setting	Description
Device grouping	Controls how device types are grouped for timezone purposes: keep every type separate, merge DECT bases into Phones (default), or group all devices under a single timezone.
Device type visibility (Phones / Gateways / Virtual Appliances / DECT)	Which device categories are shown to users and have their own settable timezone. (In general, we recommend to only adjust time zone for phones with displays. Adjusting of gateways will also change time stamp in loggings. The exception is if wake-up or Boolean objects with time settings are used in the pbx. In these cases the pbx gateway also needs local time.)
Change log	Shows the audit log of timezone changes in the user app.
Timezone map editing	Lets users add, edit, or delete entries in the timezone list themselves.
Notifications	Lets users opt in to push notifications when a timezone changes. Mobile users need the innovaphone Push service, browser users need a trusted HTTPS certificate - without either, those users won't receive notifications even with this enabled.
Allow UTC override	Enables the manual UTC time override tool, used for testing or to recover from a platform clock loss.
Device time check interval	How often each online device's actual clock is checked over the network. A short interval combined with many devices increases HTTP traffic to the App Platform and to the devices themselves - use the longest interval that still meets your needs, especially on larger deployments.
Clock drift warning	Warn when a device's reported clock differs from the expected time by more than this.
Dashboard fine-adjust step	How many minutes the small +/- button on the dashboard adjusts by (the 1h button is fixed). "Let users change this setting themselves" lets end users pick their own value from their own Settings tab.
NTP outage detection	Flag a configured NTP server as unreachable once at least this percentage of the devices using it haven't synced within their own interval.
Auto-correct	Automatically corrects a device's time/timezone configuration when a mismatch is found. "Let users change this setting themselves" lets end users turn auto-correct on or off from their own Settings tab.

User "Settings" tab

The settings in the burger menu in the UTC Offset user app, depends on settings in the Settings app (PBX plugin).

Setting	Description
Device types	Which device categories this user sees - only shown when more than one category is visible.
Only show types that have devices	Hides a category entirely when it currently has no devices.
View	Which view is shown: the devices table, the dashboard, or both.
Dashboard layout	Box format or row format for the dashboard cards.
Clock display	Analog + digital, analog only, or digital only.
Show UTC time on top	Shows a UTC clock header above the dashboard/table.
Simple mode	Hides the status, product, and IP columns in the devices table.
Reset to default	Resets this user's own display preferences back to the app's defaults.

Auto-correct, dashboard fine-adjust step, and notification opt-in only appear in this tab when the admin has delegated control of that setting to users (see the Manager "Configure" panel above).

Contact

Vcom AS

1366 Lysaker, Norway

Tel: +47 21 67 37 70

Mail: post@vcom.no

For any questions please refer to our contact page.