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British Summer Time Problem

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Posted on by Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee

I have a PowerApp and a Flow connected to it, which sends an email to the company with the data pulled from a SharePoint List.

There are a few Date columns in the list, however since we changed to BST (+1Hour) all the dates are now an hour behind (even though the correct date/time shows in the form).

I have read a few posts regarding TimeZoneOffset but I can't seem to apply it to my application.

For simplicity I will focus on one data card called:

"Event_x0020_Date_x0028_s_x0029__"

The update on this card is:

"MasterDate.SelectedDate + Time(Value(MasterHour.Selected.Value), Value(MasterMinute.Selected.Value), 0)"

On the Flow, the formula used to display the date on an email is:

formatdatetime(item()?['Event_x0020_Date_x0028_s_x0029__'],'dddd dd MMMM yyyy H:mm')

Any help anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated

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Building flows

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v-yamao-msft Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi @Anonymous ,

It is a known issue for PowerApps and Microsoft Flow.

PowerApps will convert date time values to the local value. On PowerApps, when you set the DateTimeZone property of a Date picker control to UTC, it assumes that the input value is in UTC, the control will then display the local value to the user.

In your scenario, let’s say you’ve input date time value of ‘01/05/2019 00:00 UTC’, PowerApps recognizes that your timezone is BST and subtracts 1 hour to show the input value in your local time. The displayed date time value is “30/04/2019 23:00”.

Please consider using function addhours to add 1 hour to the date time value.

More details about addhours, please check it at here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/logic-apps/workflow-definition-language-functions-reference#addHours

Best regards,

Mabel

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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So are you saying that we should edit our flows every 6 months to remove the BST logic?
What about in a system where the date is not representative of the current time?

The only way I see this being a feasible workaround in flow is if you check the date value is within the range of the timezone offset for the summer time and then add an hour. Which is horrific to implement in flows logic.
SharePoint Workflows run in the SharePoint's locale so it avoids this problem.

For all who have to deal with BST or any other timezone with a shifting summer time I recommend using Bing's Timezone API since it's free. You can then convert to the required timezone; do your date operations and then convert it back.
Hopefully this point will be moot next year when most countries abandon Summer Timezone offsets. I'll be much closer to sanity then.

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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I've found a solution in this expression:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/logic-apps/workflow-definition-language-functions-reference#convertFromUtc

In your context:

convertFromUtc(item()?['Event_x0020_Date_x0028_s_x0029__'], 'GMT Standard Time', 'dddd dd MMMM yyyy H:mm')

This has worked for me year round, accounting for changes in BST.

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Stephen Pickett 7 on at

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Hi Dan,
What were your findings? Did it work?
Kind Regards,
Steve

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Community Power Pla... Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi Steve,

My solution has worked all year round, I'll see if I can edit my previous reply to clarify.

Thanks,
Dan

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Stephen Pickett 7 on at

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Thanks Dan, that's really helpful to know!
Kind Regards,
Steve

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Stephen Pickett 7 on at

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Hello,
This didn't work for me - I think my issue was more related to the API's/applications being used though - I was working with Outlook/Office 365 and Google Calendar. What helped in the end was this:

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Building-Flows/Google-Calendar-to-365-changing-event-time/m-p/83106#M8239

I had to convert from UTC to UTC, I think this is due to Google Calendar utilising BST whereas Outlook is using GMT but must be doing some hidden conversion. I've not yet tested it in the winter so we'll see how that goes then!
Kind Regards,
Steve

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sips1 43 on at

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Thanks @Anonymous . The convertFromUtc worked for me.

I used:

convertFromUtc(utcNow(), 'GMT Standard Time', 'dd/MM/yyyy hh:mm')

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Guy Boswell 234 on at

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Hi @v-yamao-msft Mabel
Please don't I am having a go at you - you are being very helpful. But it just isn't good enough to have a, "known issue"! MicroSoft need to sort this out. The work around, addhours, is incredibly complex to use because the date on which UK times changes from GMT to BST is different each year. Anybody any idea how we get this properly resolved?
Thank you
Guy

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Guy Boswell 234 on at

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Here, here! Unfortunately it looks like we are stuck with GMT / BST for now and might be stuck with just BST in the future!!!

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