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in testing zap_meta_human_now uses UTC but when running it uses the system timezone

  • 29 May 2023
  • 3 replies
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This has been driving me a bit batty 

In editor testing I get the correct result when I use UTC from zap_meta_human_now but when actually running it use the system timezone 

I’ll probably just change to {{zap_meta_utc_iso}} to force a standard - just fairly frustrated at this point because test an published functionality isn’t the same 



Similar complaint/comment to this thread 

 

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Best answer by Danvers 30 May 2023, 16:59

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Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Hi @Lorne!

That does sound frustrating! A few things I can think to check:

  1. The Zap settings

     

  2. Your Zapier account settings
  3. The app that’s receiving the data (I don’t think you mentioned where it’s being sent). 

Where are you trying to include the date, that it’s not working properly? In other words, what’s your action step where you’ve used {{zap_meta_human_now}}?

To demonstrate I created a simple zap to send me a Slack message when it triggers each hour

The test was done at 4:26PM Pacific time (UTC-7) and you can see it correctly shows 23:26UTC I then published without making any changes
The hourly trigger ran at 5pm PT and it shows a time of 17:00

If it followed the output of the test it should have shown 2023-05-30T00:00:00
 

This is the example step in question
 


Not really looking for a ‘fix’ here just acknowledgement / confirmation that the result when testing in editor and the result when published are different. ​​​​​​​

Userlevel 7
Badge +12

Hi @Lorne!

I’m sorry for the frustration on this. I did some digging and testing in my account and you’re right. When you test a Zap action with {{zap_meta_human_now}} it will send the time in UTC, but when you turn the Zap on, it will respect the timezone of your account or the Zap (if you’ve set one for the Zap). 

I can see that we do have an open bug report on this and we’ll update this Community post when we have an update on that. 

 

For any other members who find this post, to be super clear, the issue is a difference between the time when testing a Zap step vs when it’s turned on. If you have turned on your Zap and a timestamp like {{zap_meta_human_now}} is outputting the wrong time in an app, check the timezone settings on your account and on the Zap. Then check the settings of the app that is receiving the information to check that everything lines up. If you’re still having trouble with the time being wrong, please post a new question in the community. Thank you!

 

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