Instana

Instana

The community for performance and observability professionals to learn, to share ideas, and to connect with others.

 View Only

Add Time Zone Support for IBM Instana Alerting

By Vijay Sanapala posted 05/28/26 12:13 PM

  

Authors - @Nevil Kandathil Sintho (Dev Lead), @Vijay Sanapala  (Product Manager)

Email alerts can now display Start/End time in a selected time zone (for example, EST) instead of the default UTC. This makes alerts easier to interpret, speeds up triage, and reduces mistakes during incident response; especially for globally distributed teams. 

You can now set up a specific time zone for email alerts, so recipients see timestamps in the chosen local time instead of UTC. 

  • Before: Alert email timestamps shown in UTC 

  • Now: Alert email timestamps shown in the selected time zone (e.g., EST) 

Why does this matter? 

  • Faster incident triage  

  • Better alignment across teams  

  • Clearer audit and reporting 

Step-by-step time zone configuration for email alerts 

  1. Go to Settings > Global settings. 

  1. Under Events & alerts, click Alert channels 

  1. Create a new Email alert channel (or edit an existing one).  

  1. Expand Advanced. 

  1. Click Add timezone. 

  1. Select the preferred time zone (for example, EST – Eastern Standard Time). 

  1. (Optional) Click Preview to review the email message before saving. 

  1. Click Create 

Walkthrough of Screenshots: 

Time zone selection 

FAQ 

1) What alert channels are currently supported? 

Time zone selection is available for: 

  • Email 

  • MS Teams 

2) Does adding a time zone change alert trigger? 

No. This enhancement only changes how timestamps are displayed in the Alert notification content. 

3) Is the time zone per user or per alert channel? 

It’s configured on the alert channel; meaning the channel’s selected time zone is applied to emails sent via that channel. 

4) What happens if I don’t set a time zone? 

Email alerts continue using the default UTC timestamp format. 

 

 


#Alerting
#Ideas

0 comments
11 views

Permalink