We've created a "neighborhood" for each time zone serviced by the CU*Answers iSeries. When you sign onto CU*BASE, the system knows where your credit union is from and you (and your session) live in a "subsystem" dedicated to that time zone. (A subsystem is an IBM term; these are used for many different functions on the IBM, from online banking to processing eAlerts, and now for handling time zones for end- and beginning-of day processing.)
Then when we start nightly processing for the Central Time Zone at 12:00 AM CT, only users in the subsystem for CT users are shut down from 12:00 AM CT until completion of processing. Then it’s back to business as usual for credit unions in the Central Time Zone.
This is a great improvement from the previous system where all credit unions were put in stand in and processed at one time starting at 12 AM Eastern Time, regardless of time zone. The new method greatly shortens the time all credit unions are in stand-in for nightly processing and puts credit unions in stand in at 12 AM for their appropriate time zone.