Power Automate Trigger for Date Only field in SharePoint does not include Timestamp and overwrites date on each run

[zapftho1]

I have built a flow that is triggered based on updates on a SharePoint list. This list contains a "Date and Time" field called "Request Date" with the following configuration:

When saving I value to this field in SharePoint it only shows the date in the UI (which is expected due to its configuration). The actual value that is being saved is a UTC Timestamp including time (I have been able to check this with PnP Powershell by getting the actual field value there).

2024-04-24 13:15:12Z

Now when my flow is trigger by a change to an item in this list, the input of the flow for looks like the following:

So it does not get the Timestamp but only the date. As I am also doing updates to the same item in the flow I noticed that suddenly the date that I see in SharePoint has been different with a user that is in a timezone like UTC-4. After checking the value of the field in SharePoint again I can see that it was set to 22:00 UTC Time the day before.

2024-04-24 22:00:00Z

This brings me to the conclusion that the missing time stamp in the flow trigger causes Power Automate to handle the date field always as 00:00 AM UTC time and updates the date field with the UTC time as per the flow users regional settings, no matter if am actually setting the request date field in my flow or not.

This is the output of the Update action in Power Automate for the request date field:

This causes a wrong request date for the user that has actually created the request in another timezone (UTC-4) than the owner of the flow (UTC+1). I cannot use any of the convertTimeZone functions in Power Automate due to the missing timestamp information in the trigger to prevent this as the flow always handles it as 00:00 AM UTC.

Is there any way to get the timestamp information in the trigger for a Date & Time field and SharePoint that is defined to show DateOnly in the UI without changing the field to "Date and Time" in SharePoint or to prevent the flow from always updating this field (even though I did not define in the flow to do so)? Actually to me this even looks a bit like a bug as SharePoint stores the timestamp internally and only Power Automate does not recognize it on the trigger input.

[creativeopinion]

@zapftho1 If your SP date time column is set to only display the date, it'll only output a date.

When you use the convertTimeZone function in Power Automate and don’t specify a time for your date (aka it's not a timestamp—just a date), it'll to midnight in UTC. 

When you use the convertTimeZone() function in Power Automate and don't specify a time for your date, it defaults to midnight in UTC. If you convert this time to another time zone, the system adjusts it based on the time difference between UTC and your chosen time zone. So, midnight in UTC can appear as an earlier time on the previous day, depending on how many hours behind UTC your target time zone is.

In my output below, I converted UTC to MST, since MST is 6 hours behind UTC, the system moves the time back by six hours. So, midnight in UTC becomes 6 PM the previous day in Mountain Standard Time. 

I don't think there is a way to get the timestamp information since it's a date only field. Are the users editing the SP List directly? Or are you using a PowerApp?

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In the meantime, you might be interested this YT Tutorial:

How to Work with 📆 Dates in Power Automate | Example Scenarios and Tips & Tricks

Are you easily stumped when working with Dates in Power Automate? In this Power Automate tutorial, I’ll show you how to compose an expression that will return a future date, a past date, how to count the number of days between two dates, how to check for a birthdate and anniversary date as well as tips and tricks when working with dates in Power Automate. I’ll cover some common use cases and concepts that can help you to build better Power Automate flows. Feel free to skip ahead using the timestamps listed below. I’ve also linked a few other tutorials that you might be interested in as well.

IN THIS VIDEO:

✅ 4 Date Functions You Need to Know

✅ How to use the Convert Time Zone Action

✅ How to Get a Future Date

✅ How to Get a Past Date

✅ How to Return SharePoint Items Due in a Number of Days

✅ How to Return SharePoint Items Due within a Date Range

✅ How to write a Filter Query for SharePoint Items Due in 30, 60 and 90 Days

✅ How to Calculate the Number of Days between Two Dates

✅ How to Check for a Birthdate and Anniversary Date

✅ How to work with Dates and Times in Excel

✅ How to use a Manual Trigger with Date Input

✅ How to Output Dynamic Text with an Expression

✅ How to Check if a Date Falls on a Weekend  

Hope this helps!

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[zapftho1]

@creativeopinion Thanks for your reply! We are actually using an SPFX Forms Customizer on this list. However, I tested the same behavior without any customized forms and it behaves exactly the same. That is a really bad behavior in my opinion as any flow that would update a list item that contains a Date Only field will always overwrite it with some other date only because the timestamp is not available in the trigger output of the flow.

I can also create a calculated column that will show me Date & Time based on this field (this is the time shown for a user in UTC+2):

Even when getting the field value using the SharePoint REST API it returns the field value including time information

So one workaround could be to always get the date using REST API and tell the flow explicitly to set this date for this field instead of overwriting it with the value that does not have the timestamp information. However, this is not really a good solution and I still do not get why this information is not available in the triggerOutput when its even available using the REST API.