I keep missing all my call backs! AirTable! Do better! (Dates and automations)

[Kosta_Kondraten]

Hey guys,

Pardon the crazy title - I love AirTable but I am really confused as to why I can’t get an email reminder for my call backs every morning.

Let me explain - I have a table called ‘Tasks’ where I can put in call backs and set the date and time for when I want the call back to happen - I then have a View called ‘Today’s Tasks’ - I’ve created an automation which takes every task from Today’s Tasks and emails it to me in the morning - so I know who I have to follow up - makes sense right?

Here’s the problem though - for some reason my automated email sends me tasks from… yesterday! Like wut?

Here’s one example I got this morning:

Notice Andrew Carter’s call back date is the 12th October but it gets sent on the 13th (one day late). I just went and ran the automation manually and when I do I get the correct details of people:

I just want th epeople in “Today’s Tasks” - TODAY - to be emailed to me every morning… and I just don’t understand why this is so difficult… I’m trying to figure out if the issue is that the Today’s Date is in a different time zone than my timezone… who knows.

But where would you look to fix this incredible annoying issue?

Any input much appreciated!
P.S. I did ask this question before but it’s like dead silence when I did so trying again lol… anyone?

[kuovonne]

Kenneth_Raghunandan:

Also, Airtable automations run based on GMT time.

I think scheduled automations display the time in local time when you are configuring them, but they are probably stored internally ad GMT time.

[Kosta_Kondraten]

Yeh honestly the whole thing is giving me a headache - I don’t know what GMT time is but as a quick solution I just made Today be… Tomorrow or Yesterday or whatever so that in the morning I get today’s tasks… as long as they come through in the morning but then later in the day they dissapear so… band aid solution I will review other responses too but that works for me :slightly_smiling_face:

[Kosta_Kondraten]

Yes I’ll toggle that and see how it works all though i’ve done band aid by making today tomorrow… or yesterday I don’t remember… at least the email in the mornning is accurate before they disspaer due to some random time zone issue lol

[kuovonne]

Kosta_Kondratenko:

I don’t know what GMT time

GMT is the timezone Greenwich Mean Time. It corresponds to UTC or Coordinated Universal Time. In Airtable, today is the day it is at GMT.

For most people in Europe or the Americas GMT “today” is close enough to the actual day that the time zone difference doesn’t matter. However, in Australia the time zone difference is much bigger, leading to things being off by a day.

[Kosta_Kondraten]

Yep, this is my exact issue - and I assume there’s no way to tell AirTable I’m not in Greenwich right?

[Kenneth_Raghuna]

Thank your for that note!

[Kenneth_Raghuna]

Use the SET_TIMEZONE() function whenever you are using DATETIME_FORMAT(), OR make sure that “Use the same time zone…” is toggled on for any Date: Include Time fields that you have.