Problem

In Jira Service Management Cloud, when a portal/Help Center user has not explicitly configured a timezone in their Atlassian account profile, the Help Center defaults to displaying timestamps using the site/instance timezone (configured under System Settings → General Configuration → Default user time zone) rather than the user's actual local timezone.

This means that for distributed and global teams, all users without a manually configured profile timezone will see timestamps in the same instance-level timezone, which may not reflect their actual location, leading to confusion around SLA times, request activity, and ticket timestamps.

Suggested Solution

Jira Cloud should automatically detect and apply the user's browser or OS timezone as the display timezone when no timezone has been explicitly set in their Atlassian account profile. This would bring the behavior in line with common web application standards where the browser's timezone is used as a sensible default.

Why This Is Important

• Global and distributed organizations with large numbers of portal users are impacted, as timestamps displayed in the Help Center do not reflect each user's local time.

• The current workaround (each user manually setting their timezone in their Atlassian account profile) is not scalable for large organizations onboarding many users, particularly for portal-only customer accounts who may not be aware of or have easy access to their profile settings.

• This creates confusion around time-sensitive information such as SLA countdowns, request creation times, and activity history visible in the Help Center.

Workaround

Each user can manually set their preferred timezone by navigating to their Atlassian account profile at https://id.atlassian.com/manage-profile/profile-and-visibility and updating the Time zone field. However, this requires individual action from every user and is not practical at scale for large organizations.