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Question

How do I search for a specific string in a dynamic date range every Monday?

  • March 19, 2024
  • 1 reply
  • 76 views
I

Hi,

 

I am making a slack reminder bot, but I can’t seem to get the date ranges to work correctly.

 

The steps, triggers and actions I am using are:

  1. Schedule by Zapier
    1. Event = Every Week
    2. Trigger = Monday @ 9 AM
  2. Microsoft Outlook
    1. Event = Find Calendar Event
    2. Actions:
      1. Calendar = Team Calendar
      2. Search term = “iharpe18 -”
      3. Start date & Time = “Pretty Day of The Week, Pretty Date, Pretty Time”
      4. End date & Time = “Pretty Day of The Week, Pretty Date, Pretty Time”
      5. Success when nothing’s found - No
  3. Slack
    1. Event = Send Channel Message
    2. Actions:
      1. Channel = test
      2. Message Text = Subject, Start Date Time, End Date Time (This doesn’t seem to pull the format I set up in the Outlook actions)
      3. Send as a bot = Yes
      4. Bot name = Reminder Bot

 

The only issues I’m having is trying to narrow the Outlook search range from midnight the Monday the Zap is fired to midnight Saturday so 5 days later. I don’t see a section in the outlook event to narrow that. I assume I need a step between Schedule by Zapier and Microsoft Outlook, but I’m not sure what I would need or how to set it up.

The only other issue is the Message text doesn’t format or have the correct timezone as how I set it up in the Outlook step. This isn’t a big deal, but I would be very grateful if someone knew that answer.

 

Thanks in advance.

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1 reply

SamB
Community Manager
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  • SamBCommunity Manager
  • Community Manager
  • 7859 replies
  • March 20, 2024

Hey there @iharpe18. Thanks for joining the Community here! 😁
 

The only issues I’m having is trying to narrow the Outlook search range from midnight the Monday the Zap is fired to midnight Saturday so 5 days later. I don’t see a section in the outlook event to narrow that.


I think the issue might be that the Find Event action is searching for a specific event that starts and ends at the date and time that’s been provided. It’s won’t look for all events that occur within a date range of the specified start and end date & time.

Am I correct in thinkin that you’re wanting to search for all events within a specific date range so that you can list them within the Slack message? 

If so, I’d recommend reaching out to the Support team to ask them open up a feature request to have a Find Events action added that would allow you to search for all events within a specific date range. You can do that using the form here: https://zapier.com/app/get-help

In the meantime, if the Microsoft Outlook API supports searching for multiple events within a date range, you could potentially use the Microsoft Outlook API Request (Beta) action instead of that Find Event action. It’s a bit more advanced to set up as you’d need to reference the Microsoft Outlook API documentation to set up the request but we have a general guide on how to configure that sort of action here which may help: Set up an API request action

 

The only other issue is the Message text doesn’t format or have the correct timezone as how I set it up in the Outlook step. 


Can you share a screenshot of what fields have been selected in the Slack action and confirm the desired format? It may be that you’ll need to use a couple of Formatter (Date/Time > Format) action to change the format of the start and end dates (see: Modify date and time formats in Zaps). But I’d like to take a closer at what’s currently selected to see if there’s anything on the set up that might be preventing the desired format from being used. Please remove/hide any private information (like names, emails, addresses etc.) from any screenshots before sharing.


Looking forward to your reply!

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