Timezones messing up Workflow

[eric10]

I have a workflow to add a date to a chat record, so I can create a repeating group to display the chat messages in different days. This works great, but found one having repeating days and could not figure out why until I looked at the record. I had one time 1/27/2022 12:00 AM, and one for 1/26/2022 10:00 PM.

It turns out since the other person was in a different timezone it was making a time at different times, and now there are 2 dates for a single day instead of 1. I’ve tried formating the text to be a specific timezone, but it won’t let me do that.

Any suggestions on how to get the dates added in the same timezone so there are not multiple dates anytime the two people are in different timezones?

[williamtisdale]

I think when saving the date you want to be sure not to account for the current user’s time zone but when you are displaying it then you would want to convert the saved time to their time zone only for visual reasons. I have not really messed with dates much in Bubble but I think it should save it has a standard GMT time.

[eric10]

How would I save it to a different time zone? I tried using formatting but the text just goes red. The date actually never gets displayed it’s just what I use to create “sections” in a RG that has another repeating group inside it for all chat messages which fall within the date.

[eric10]

Here is an example of how it’s displayed. Ignore my test user and weird test chats. haha.

[eric10]

How do you save it as a different timezone? Not seeing how to do that.

[guy.blueoceans]

creating date record in Bubble is easy. Creating “timezone aware” date record in Bubble is very tricky. Dates/times are a complicated & messy data item to work with when timezones are a factor. Right now I’m going to assume your level of date/times inside Bubble is low; if that is mistaken just me know.

#1 recommendation. read these 2 specific posts.
Date and Time data structuring - #6 by keith and
Date and Time data structuring - #7 by jon2
I note that user “Keith” is my #1 recommendation for understanding date/time. He has many posts on dates in forum.

FYI I had a similar timezone date/time issue back in November & I went on a 5 week deep dive on dates. The good news is using a plug in I was able to solve my issue. But before I knew which plug in to buy; I had to know dates really well. And that took me time to figure out all the concepts etc.

it’s worth you knowing about these plugins:
Free: Browser Timezone and Locale Plugin | Bubble

Paid: Parallels: Date/Range Transformer Plugin | Bubble

once you absorbed everything to best of your ability, let me know if I can help more. There are many forum posts on dates/times so trust me…this is well discussed area that many people have thoughts on/advice to offer. good luck!