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Sean McLarenAre you saying that it's 'expected' that a user is unable to set their timezone, and that there's no indication of how they can do so? If the user has disabled Location Services (which is in an entirely different panel) but the 'auto time zone update' service is enabled (but not functional because Location Services is disabled) then all functionality to set the time zone manually is disabled. There is no information in the UI that re-enabling Location Services will allow the time zone to be set. This is not at all user friendly, and especially so when you consider that the 'old' date & time control panel is still able to set time zone in this situation (if the user can find it).
P.S. Your 'fix' involves forcing Location Services on for every user. Just FYI not everyone likes being spied on.
Also this came up recently when a C-suite user travelled and rang up the IT department furious because he couldn't change the time zone himself, and the screen said 'Some of the settings are managed by your organisation.' Of course we had done no such thing, we just had to tell them that the Windows 11 settings app is broken.
- Thank you for the feedback on the usability of the UI and settings and I will take this feedback to the appropriate teams. We are always looking for ways to improve the user experience and value the feedback. If you are seeing a message that says this setting is managed by your organization that means a policy is set on the machine, which can happen from a GPO, registry change, MDM management solution, etc. so it's difficult for me to guess that exact state your device is in or how the settings were applied. If you believe you've hit an issue or a bug, I'd encourage you to contact Microsoft Support, as they can help debug and troubleshoot the behavior you are seeing, and they can also file a bug if they encounter one or a design change if that is appropriate. They really are the best resource to get to the root of an issue and take the best action. The reason you are seeing the 2 settings interact is that there is no way to automatically detect time zone without location, so the 2 settings are tied together.
Sean McLarenThanks for taking that feedback. I'm afraid my experience is that Microsoft Support are next to useless for anything that's more than a little bit complicated, so I tend to look for other channels to raise it with you guys (feel free to let your bosses work on on that whole 'impossible to get past the awful first line support' problem).
Also FYI regarding the message 'Some of these settings are managed by your organisation' in the Date & Time panel - this appears merely through joining a domain - there are no policies applied in GPO, Intune etc that manage this (I've tested this extensively using gpresult, manually scanning the registry etc). I can only think that it appears on domain joined devices because they get time from a domain controller, which technically is 'managed by your organisation, I guess.