Current time in Flow seems to be one hour off -- not sure if time zone or daylight savings issue

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Posted on by jebascho

Summary of my problem

I am experiencing a time difference (approximately 1 hour) between my source data on OneDrive and my Flow outputs.

Description of my Flow

I have a shared Excel file on OneDrive which determines the status of records based on the current date and time based on a series of logic triggers. All the Flow does is convert the data from Excel into formats that can be read by other programs; it creates a csv file for mapping and an html file for publishing onto a website. The flow runs every minute to provide near real-time data on the status of these closures.

Observed Time Error

In Excel, the trigger in question involves comparing the current time--using NOW()-TODAY()--against a scheduled time. For example, if NOW()-TODAY() < StartTime is true, then it returns "Closing Soon"; if it's after the start time, it should display "Currently Closed". This works fine in Excel. Each records displays the expected status of each record correctly.

However, the Status in both Flow outputs--the csv and the html file--seem to be delayed by can hour. For example:

Scheduled closure start time: 7 am
Current time: 7:45am
Excel's result: "Currently Closed"
Flow's result: "Closing Soon"
- But after 8am, these items showed "Currently Closed"

I should note that my Office 365 account is set to my local time zone and that everything displays correctly on Excel. I can't for the life of me figure out where to check time settings for Power Apps or Flow, but it's all under my Office 365 account.

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Building Power Apps

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WarrenBelz 156,732 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi @jebascho ,

The first culprit I suggest you investigate is indeed daylight saving with a time zone difference between the local PC and the OneDrive location and/or Power Automate. We have just struck it in SharePoint and are still trying to manage it properly. We have different times on our iPads and PCs and as we are mainly field-based have gone with making the iPads correct.

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jebascho 47 on at

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I'm not sure how to check the time settings with Power Automate. When I select "Power Apps Settings" I only have the option to change the language.
WarrenBelz 156,732 Most Valuable Professional on at

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@jebascho ,

My guess would be in OneDrive as all action in UTC (and adjust to the relevant time zone), with the main issue being the difference between the data and app settings.

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jebascho 47 on at

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Update! So I did some scenario testing and the Flow outputs displayed correctly, but maybe 15 minutes behind. I'm curious if maybe there's a cache issue? If so, is it possible to somehow have Flow start by fetching a "new" version of the source file?
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jebascho 47 on at

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Update again. I discovered that my problem was not related to a time zone difference between OneDrive and Flow; instead, the problem seems to be with Excel. The NOW() and TODAY() functions only reflect the last time the .xlsx was opened and changed (when ever there's an autosave). So if I last updated the file at 3:45pm, Flow would maintain that time as "now" regardless of what Flow's time is.