Formatting the date in Zapier emails

[PJ_Saysell-Rosa]

Hello,

I am using Email by Zapier to inform my colleagues of when they have been invited to meetings. The email references the “time” field from Airtable, which is displayed as a friendly date format with a 24 hour clock segment.

However, when Zapier sends emails it reformats so that 31 March 2020 17:00 displays as:

2020-03-31T17:00:00.000Z.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!

[Bill_French]

PJ_Saysell-Rosales:

What am I doing wrong?

I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong. You just need to do a little more to make your integration work well.

Dates are stored in databases using an ISO standard and pegged to GMT. This is customary across all database platforms and considered best practice. It’s your responsibility when performing any sort of integration to transform the dates and times to fit your locale’s timezone and/or the timezone of the email recipient.

I’m not an expert in Zapier transformations, but I’m sure someone will chime in with more practical advice.

[Jolomero]

Formatter by Zapier gives you the option to formulate date/time so you can reformulate your date from Airtable: I’ve pulled this from one of mine, but it should give you an idea

[Bill_French]

Jolomero:

the option to formulate date/time

I knew someone probably had experience with dates in Zapier, but I’m puzzled by this screen. If Zapier allows you to transform the date to a specific timezone, what happens when an invite is then mailed to someone in a different timezone than selected in the configuration?

[Jolomero]

Great question - and depending on your use case this would be easy or not. I know you can upload a csv to zapier now but have to confess I haven’t tried it. I will this weekend and will update this post.

I think the OP indicated that the emails would be to his colleagues, so I would actually have an additional column in my Airtable that indicated the date converted date for each person. Then I’d use that column in Zapier to feed a templated email.

[Jolomero]

Having played around with the CSV upload to Zapier, I’d have to say that my alternative option of having an individual timezone column for each colleague works better if using Zapier.
I also found this which seems to be related; at least it has relevant information for setting up the table.

Using an IF function to manage due dates across multiple time zones Views

That totally worked. I had a combination of problems-- date format, as you noticed, was off, and I also needed to be applying the formula to the formula field, not the one I’d formatted for Users to look at. This is working great now. Many thanks!