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Automation publishing wrong dates in google calendar

  • October 24, 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 35 views
U
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Hi all!

I'm using Airtable to track leave requests and automatically add peoples approved leave requests to Google Calendar. Currently, I have 'Leave Start Date' and 'Leave End Date' date fields which are used as the 'Start Date' and 'End Date' of the creating a google calendar event automation. However, the event rarely gets published with the correct end date. Instead, the event often gets published with an End Date one day before the submitted 'Leave End Date' (i.e. a leave that's supposed to be from October 1-October 10 will get published as October 1-October 9). Both of my calendars are in the same time zone, and even more confusing, the Start Date is always correct. 

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!!

2 replies

ScottWorld
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  • ScottWorld
  • Genius
  • 9808 replies
  • October 24, 2023

Sorry, I don’t have a specific answer for you, but it has something to do with timezones.

Airtable doesn’t handle time zones very well, and Airtable’s automations ONLY run in GMT time zone, so you typically need to use formulas to offset your times in your base to account for this.

It’s possible that my sample time zones base & training video might help you solve this problem.

But honestly, I find it a million zillion trillion times easier to just forget Airtable’s Google Calendar automations altogether and simply use Make’s Google Calendar automations instead.

Not only does Make support about 40 additional Google Calendar features that Airtable doesn’t support, but most importantly for you is that you can set your Make scenarios to run in a specific time zone, and you can very easily override any time zone at any moment by using Make’s formatDate and parseDate functions.

It is so unbelievably quick & easy to specify a time zone in Make’s scenarios that it’s very surprising that Airtable hasn't implemented this same capability in their own native automations. 

There is a small learning curve with Make, which is why I created this basic navigation video to help. I also provide the links to a few other Make training resources there as well. For example, to instantly trigger your Make scenarios from Airtable, check out this thread.

p.s. If you have a budget for your project and you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with any of this, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consulting — ScottWorld 

 

 

U
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  • user_533
  • Author
  • New Participant
  • 1 reply
  • October 26, 2023

Sorry, I don’t have a specific answer for you, but it has something to do with timezones.

Airtable doesn’t handle time zones very well, and Airtable’s automations ONLY run in GMT time zone, so you typically need to use formulas to offset your times in your base to account for this.

It’s possible that my sample time zones base & training video might help you solve this problem.

But honestly, I find it a million zillion trillion times easier to just forget Airtable’s Google Calendar automations altogether and simply use Make’s Google Calendar automations instead.

Not only does Make support about 40 additional Google Calendar features that Airtable doesn’t support, but most importantly for you is that you can set your Make scenarios to run in a specific time zone, and you can very easily override any time zone at any moment by using Make’s formatDate and parseDate functions.

It is so unbelievably quick & easy to specify a time zone in Make’s scenarios that it’s very surprising that Airtable hasn't implemented this same capability in their own native automations. 

There is a small learning curve with Make, which is why I created this basic navigation video to help. I also provide the links to a few other Make training resources there as well. For example, to instantly trigger your Make scenarios from Airtable, check out this thread.

p.s. If you have a budget for your project and you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with any of this, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consulting — ScottWorld 

 

 


Thank you so much for your in depth response, I really appreciate it! I'll definitely check out the Make website and the solutions you suggested 🙂


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