Date/Time, Calendly and Zapier

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Hi there - feeling like this is a newbie question, but I’ve also exhausted my other options :slight_smile:

I’m trying to import appointments scheduled through Calendly into Coda via Zapier.

My understanding is that Coda automatically sets/displays a timezone based on the user’s location (if that’s not correct, please let me know :slight_smile:).

I set up a test event for my Zap, with a start date/time of January 14th at 9:00 AM EST
Calendly outputs this date as: 2020-01-14T09:00:00-05:00

I scheduled the event in a time zone of “America/New_York”, and I also am physically in the timezone “America/New_York” (confirmed in Coda with the CurrentTimezone() function.).

Coda is displaying the date time as 1/14/2020 7:00 AM, when I expect to see 9:00 AM.

Do I need to work in a step to my Zap to adjust the time before adding it to Coda? The doc will be used by a team across multiple timezones, so I want to make sure I have this sorted out appropriately.

Thanks so much!

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Hey @Alli_Alosa! Time and dates can be confusing. I use Zapier a lot to move things into my docs. You can always use the value that is passed as part of the first payload, or let Zapier dynamically assign a date field. I like to do the latter, and use this article to ‘hard code’ in the timezone you want.

See the above article for more details, but the most common solution is to use {{zap_meta_human_now}} in the time field and this will return the time in the timezone you have set in your Zapier settings.

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Hi @Johg_Ananda, thanks for the help!

I do use {{zap_meta_human_now}} a lot, but in this particular instance… I need the actual date and time that the event was scheduled for, not the date and time it was scheduled. :frowning: For example I could schedule an event now for two weeks from today, where the latter is what I need to import into Coda.

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Sounds like this would depend on what kind of payload you are getting from Calendly into Zapier … then find something that hast he 9:00 in it and extract it. Then use that 9 to re-create the time field. Make sense?

1 Like
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I think I understand what you’re saying. I ended up putting a format step in the zap that formats the date/time based on the invitee’s timezone. Luckily, Calendly passes this data through :slight_smile:

I wish I had better understanding of date/time with regards to web development… that’s one topic I’ve always avoided diving into :sweat_smile:

Thanks for your help!

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Great to hear you got it working! My base premise is to format the data BEFORE it gets into Coda if possible. So always try to use the formatter to get it right so you can just have clean formulas and tables in Coda. The Utilities Lookup Table is great for fixing data on its way in.