During Discovery, native date and time information is extracted and normalized to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) if not already stored in this format. Processing then uses the time zone configured in the Processing Profile (and corresponding Data Sources that inherit this setting) to apply the desired UTC offset to date and time metadata fields. These adjusted values are also reflected in the extracted text, for example, the Sent Date/Time displayed in the header portion of the email text.
In the case of emails, the Sent Date/Time value from the message header is used in the generation of the processing deduplication hash. However, this approach utilizes pre-adjusted date and time values, allowing for deduplication of emails sent and received in different time zones.
For Daylight Saving Time (DST), Relativity maintains a table that stores current and historical DST rules by location. In this way, the appropriate DST adjustment is always applied on top of the UTC offset, given a document's specific date in combination with the selected time zone. For example, a change to how the United States observes DST went into effect in 2007. Relativity applies the appropriate DST adjustment, which is different for documents authored before and after 2007, provided the configured time zone falls within the United States.
Processing also utilizes the configured time zone to populate two system fields that are automatically mapped and published to the workspace: Relativity Native Time Zone Offset and Time Zone Field. These are used downstream for Native Viewer file conversion and Imaging activities. For more information, see System-Mapped Fields.