Time Zone Issue

[Amapola188]

I'm having an issue with the way Power Automate communicates date/time into SharePoint. It's not really a time zone issue per se, I think.

The time I'm trying to parse comes in like this:

May 26, 2023 at 15:00

I'm pulling it apart to parse the date and the time.

My SharePoint site is in New Zealand time. Obviously, Power Automate doesn't know the time zone of the actual date/time (it can be US or Central European but I don't really need to deal with that) but when the time arrives in my list, it shows in what I think is UTC.

I don't really want to convert it, because Power Automate doesn't seem to be able to deal with daylight saving and I want the actual (i.e. what will be local) training date/times. Because of this, I think ConvertFromUTC is not going to give me anything better.

Does anybody have similar issues and how do they handle this?

Thanks,

Christine

[cha_cha]

Hello @Amapola188 

How about you pass the data from PowerApps in UTC format?

Text([DateTime_variable],DateTimeFormat.UTC)

If in case Automate is not reading well, here's a guide on how you convert it:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-automate/desktop-flows/how-to/convert-text-datetime

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[Amapola188]

@cha_cha Thanks for the suggestion but I think that's what Power Automate is doing.

So the date does go into the SharePoint list but instead of Friday, 3 pm, it shows as Saturday, 3 am (or along those lines depending on what the time different between UTC and NZ at the date is, depending on whether Europe and NZ are not daylight saving)

So the obvious answer would be to convert it to 'new zealand standard time' but I guess my problem is that I don't really want the date/time in local NZ time, I want to retain the original local time. I need to know if they finish in time for them to catch a flight so I don't want to backtrack what local time might be.

Also, I have 3 training location, Central Europe, US (NC) and China (well, maybe again one day!) so any conversion would be one hell of a mess anyway as the times are always given as local time at training location.

[Amapola188]

@cha_cha Also - I'm not passing from PowerApps but parsing the information from an email. So strictly Power Automate.

[cha_cha]

Hello @Amapola188 

You would probably get a better answer in Automate community.

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/General-Power-Automate/bd-p/MPAForum

But here is how I would do it if I were doing it in Power Automate:

Scenario A:

If your date/time is being parsed in UTC format, just ensure that your flow is passing it as UTC format - ISO-8601 by adding Z to the DateTime so it can be recognized as UTC datetime. SharePoint will react accordingly to this.

A sample of the format is like this:

If you are not sure whether the date/time being passed is in UTC format, trace your previous run and compare the input time and output time differences. It might help you gauge the number of hours needed for conversion if in case its not in UTC.

If Scenario B:

[Amapola188]

@cha_cha 

Doh, wrong forum! 

Actually, you gave me an idea. Power Automate seems to allow for daylight saving since it gives me different values depending on the date. UTC is a constant (I think?). So if I take off 12 hours, I might just get where I want.

I will try and post in correct forum if successful!