How do I schedule a repeated post in Buffer every 3 days without causing an infinite loop?

Hi @mptc-social 

Good question.

Can you clarify which Buffer trigger/action you are trying to use in the Zap? (screenshots)

Hi @Troy Tessalone 

Screenshot attached

The scheduled date & time has no ability to set something like “Today” + 3 days, for example, only “Today”.

(I want to duplicate every scheduled post so that it is scheduled 3 days in the future)

Thank you

@mptc-social 

Check out this related topic:

Thank you @Troy Tessalone that looks like what we need, much appreciated.

I’ve made that change:

but receive

@mptc-social

You are missing a space before the +

Thank you, that scheduled the post for 3 day’s time, but at the wrong time, using the following doesn’t schedule the post at all (there is only 1 variable to choose related to time; Due Time)

This format seems to match the required format?

Using this format doesn’t work either (nothing is scheduled in Buffer):
 

@mptc-social 

Check the field description and link.

If the modifiers don’t work, then try adding this Zap action: Formatter > Date & Time > Add/Subtract Time

Thanks @Troy Tessalone 

The time format looks fine, checking the field description/link.

Bit confused, where does the Formatter get added?

At the end? 

Can actions be nested?

The expression Day + 3d +2h is not working atm.

Hello there @mptc-social! 👋

The Formatter action step would need to go in between the Buffer trigger and action steps. Then in the Schedule Date & Time field on the Add to Queue (Buffer) action you’d select the date/time output from the Formatter action.

The Expression field accepts combined values so if you want to add 3 days and 2 hours to the input date/time supplied then you’d use +3 days +2 hours as the expression: 


That said, the Input field appears to only have a day (Sunday 10th September) selected and not a time. If you’re wanting to add 2 hours to the due time then, in the Input field you’d want to select the Due Time field as well:



Can you give that a try and let us know if that works as hoped?

Thanks @SamB that change is great

Appreciate all the help provided, I’m very new to Zapier

The original Buffer posts were published at 3 pm AWST (UTC+8) yesterday/Sunday.

I want Zapier to duplicate posts and schedule the posts 3 days into the future at the same time (3 pm) they were published.

I’ve set 

• Step 2 output = {{207134851__day}} +3d {{207134851__due_time}} +8h UTC
  (I believe 207134851__due_time should mean 3 pm UTC, and +8h is to move from UTC to AWST, AWST is 8h ahead of UTC)
• Step 3 post schedule time = step 2 {{207134852__output}} AWST
  However, the post gets posted 3 days in the future at 8am AWST / 12am UTC
  (which is 7h earlier than desired)

Haalp!

@mptc-social 

Another option is to add a Delay step: https://zapier.com/apps/delay/help

I’m so sorry to hear it’s scheduling them to be posted at the wrong time, @mptc-social!  

Have you selected got the AWST timezone selected for your Zapier account? If not, that might be why it’s altering to the UTC timezone. You can find out more about how to check on that here: Check your timezone settings.

That said, it’s very odd how the Schedule Date & Time field wasn’t working when you tried using date/time modifiers like +3d previously. I wonder if that’s perhaps it only accepts human readable and relative datetime formatting? 

The help text for the field specifically says “Specify a date and time in the future. Can use relative and human readable datetime formatting.” so it may be that you can get rid of the Formatter action and enter a relative datetime like in 3 days at 3:00pm AWST instead:



That should, in theory, schedule the posts to go out in 3 days time (relative to when the Zap runs) at 3pm AWST. Can you try using that relative datetime value and confirm whether that schedules the posts for the correct day and time?