Power Automate Date Issue

[Ellsworth03054]

Ok so here's a Power Automate / Sharepoint / Date issue I'm having and I hoping that someone has come across this sort of thing before.

I am located in the US in the EST Time zone.  I have a SharePoint list that just went live Monday 17-Jan-2022 where people are submitting data. Several of the data fields are Date fields, not DateTime, just Date.

The Time Zone of the site is still the default (UTC-8) Pacific Time (US and Canada) and the Locale is English (United States) from when the site was created. I haven't changed them.

I have a number of people from Austria and Hungary that have entered 17-Jan-2022 in the date fields but when I view them I see 16-Jan-2022. Screenshots they sent me clearly show 17-Jan-2022 on their end. Furthermore, when my Power Automate flow runs, it also sees them as 16-Jan-2022 when it should be seeing them as 17-Jan-2022.

This was tested prior to go live with a number of people from around the world with no date issues but we obviously didn't test with these particular people.

To make things even murkier, this doesn't happen for all people in Austria as I see some people's dates correctly and the Power Automate flow does as well.

So far, dates entered by folks from Italy, Singapore and the US are also unaffected.

Any thoughts as to why this is happening or how I can troubleshoot it? I mean if it was happening for everyone that would be one thing, but it's not.

[abm]

Hi @Ellsworth03054 

What's the time difference between your users and Austria? Looks like Austria is 7 hours ahead than your time. So if any data entering on 17th might show in your local time as 16th. That's what I am thinking of.

Thanks

[ScottShearer]

@Ellsworth03054 

Take a look at this post.

The date/time shown in SharePoint is controlled by a combination of the sites regional settings and a user profile setting.  I believe the user profile setting is empty by default.  If the user has set the time zone, it overrides the time zone set for the site.  I suspect that the users who show a different date/time have manually set a time zone in their user profile.

[Ellsworth03054]

Austria, Hungary, Italy are all GMT+1.  EST is GMT-5, so that means they are 6 hours ahead of me.

[Ellsworth03054]

Correct.  The user profile settings are empty by default.

I did notice that one of the Austria users whose dates don't show correctly had their user profile time zone set to UTC+01:00 Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome...  Which is their right, I can't force them to use my site's regional settings.

But regardless of what Time Zone they are in and what their user profile says, Dates are stored in UTC in  SharePoint.  Its stored with 00:00:00 as the time component so why would the date field ever be viewed different?

[Ellsworth03054]

Austria, Hungary, Italy are all GMT+1.  EST is GMT-5, so that means they are 6 hours ahead of me.

[ScottShearer]

@Ellsworth03054 

Yes, all dates/times are stored as UTC in SharePoint.  But the sites regional settings or the user profile control how they are displayed to a user.  So, if the user has not set a time zone in their user profile, they will see the date/time displayed in the time zone set for the site.  If a user profile time zone is set, that overrides the site regional setting.  

An M365 admin can lock the time zone in the user profile so that end users cannot set it.

[Ellsworth03054]

So how do I get this to work so that I always see the correct date and so that Flow always see's the correct date regardless of the time zone the user is in and regardless of their user profile settings?

[ScottShearer · Accepted solution]

@Ellsworth03054 

The only way of which I am aware to have everyone see the same date/time is to have an M365 admin prohibit users from setting a time zone in their user profile.  In addition, they will need to clear an entries that have already been made by users for the time zone. 

Please note that it does not matter in what time zone a user resides - all that matters is the sites regional settings and possible the time zone set in the user profile.

[Ellsworth03054]

So do you think if I set my profile to "Always use regional settings defined by site administrators." that would be sufficient?