The problem this solves
You set up an automation to send the daysheet at 6am every morning. Tonight you're in Seattle (PT). Tomorrow you're driving to Boise (MT). The day after, Denver (MT). Then Chicago (CT).
With a fixed timezone like America/New_York, the automation always fires at the same absolute UTC moment. That's 3am in Seattle (too early) and 5am in Chicago (also wrong). Bad.
What you actually want is "6am in whatever city the band is in that day". That's what Tour-day local does.
How it works
When you pick Tour-day local (the default in the dashboard create form), the timezone field is stored as tour_day instead of an IANA zone.
At schedule-computation time, the scheduler:
- Looks at the date the next run would fall on
- Uses that day's timezone from Master Tour if you have it connected; otherwise looks up that date's city from your itinerary
- Maps the city to its timezone (e.g. "Seattle, WA" → Pacific, "Toronto, ON" → Eastern, "Berlin, DE" → Central European)
- Computes the next firing in that timezone
So 0 6 * * * with tour_day means "6am in the venue city on the firing day".
Off days and carry-forward
What if there's no show on the firing day (travel day, off day)? The scheduler uses the nearest show day's timezone — looking back up to 14 days and ahead up to 3. When the last show and the next show are equally close, the last show wins.
So:
- Tuesday: Seattle (PT) — fires at 6am PT
- Wednesday: travel day, no show — uses Seattle PT (carry-forward) → fires at 6am PT
- Thursday: Boise (MT) — fires at 6am MT
- Friday: Denver (MT) — fires at 6am MT
Crossing city seams
What if "tomorrow" is in a different city than "today"? The scheduler uses a two-pass approach:
- Compute next fire using today's city tz
- Check what tour-day the candidate firing lands on
- If that day has a different city/tz, recompute using the destination's tz
- Use the second result
So when 6am-daily crosses Seattle → Boise overnight, the next firing lands at 6am MT in Boise, not 5am MT.
When NOT to use tour_day
If you want a fixed-zone schedule regardless of city, pick an IANA zone explicitly: America/New_York, America/Chicago, Europe/London, etc.
Use case: "send the booking agent the show sheet every Monday at 9am ET regardless of where the band is" — pick America/New_York.
Fallback
If tour_day is set and there's nothing for that day, the scheduler uses that night's hotel or travel destination, then the nearest show, then wherever the band last played. Eastern Time is used only when there are no tour days on file at all, so nothing ever silently fails to fire. If you create an automation without naming a zone, it uses tour_day.