Workflow DateTime Functions
Note
For a list of supported functions for Standard mode tools, go to the Standard mode Formula Tool documentation.
In Designer Cloud, a DateTime function performs an action or calculation on a date and time value. Use a DateTime function to add or subtract intervals, find the current date, find the first or last day of the month, extract a component of a DateTime value, or convert a value to a different format.
Date Support
Designer Cloud cannot process dates prior to January 1, 1400.
Designer Cloud uses the ISO format yyyy-mm-dd HH:MM:SS to represent dates and times. If a DateTime value is not in this format, Designer Cloud reads it as a string. To convert a column for use and manipulation in the DateTime format, use the DateTimeParse function in the expression editor or the DateTime Tool.
Some DateTime functions require you to set the format for the date. Format strings comprise of specifiers and separators.
Specifiers
Specifiers always begin with a percent sign (%), followed by a case-sensitive letter. The data must include at least a two-digit year.
Specifier | Output from DateTimeFormat | Supported Input with DateTimeParse |
|---|---|---|
%a | Abbreviated Weekday Name ("Mon") | Any valid abbreviation of a day of the week ("mon", "Tues.", "Thur"). Returns an error only if the given text is not a day of the week. Note that Designer Cloud does not check that the specified day name is valid for a particular date. |
%A | Full Weekday Name ("Monday") | Day name or any valid abbreviation of a day of the week ("mon", "Tues.", "Thur"). Returns an error only if the given text is not a day of the week. Note that Designer Cloud does not check that the specified day name is valid for a particular date. |
%b | Abbreviated Month Name ("Sep") | Any valid abbreviation of a month name ("Sep", "SEPT."). Returns an error only if the given text is not a name of a month. |
%B | Full Month Name ("September") | Month name or any valid abbreviation of a month name ("Sep", "SEPT."). Returns an error only if the given text is not a name of a month. |
%c | The date and time for the computer’s locale. | Not Supported |
%C | The Century Number ("20") | Not Supported |
%d | Day of the Month ("01") | 1 or 2 digits, ignoring spaces ("1" or "01"). |
%D | Equivalent to %m/%d/%y | Not Supported |
%e | Day of the month, leading 0 replaced by a space (" 1"). | 1 or 2 digits, ignoring spaces ("1" or "01"). |
%h | Same as %b ("Sep") | Any valid abbreviation of a month name ("Sep", "SEPT."). Returns an error only if the given text is not a name of a month. |
%H | Hour in 24 hour clock, 00 to 23. | Up to 2 digits for hour, 0 to 23. Not compatible with %p or %P. |
(capital "eye") | Hour in 12 hour clock, 01 to 12. | Up to 2 digits for hour, 1 to 12. Must follow with %p or %P. |
%j | The day of the year, from 001 to 365 (or 366 in leap years) | 3-digit day of the year, from 001 to 365 (or 366 in leap years) |
%k | 24 hours, leading zero is space, " 0" to "23". | Up to 2 digits for hour. |
(lowercase "ell") | 12 hours, leading zero is space, " 1" to "12". | Not Supported |
%M | Minutes, 00 to 59 | Up to 2 digits for minutes. |
%m | Month number, 01 to 12. | 1 or 2-digit month number, 1 or 01 to 12. |
%p | "AM" or "PM" | Case blind ("aM" or "Pm"). Must follow %I (capital "eye", hour in 12-hour format). |
%P | "am" or "pm" | Case blind ("aM" or "Pm"). Must follow %I (capital "eye", hour in 12-hour format). |
%S | Seconds, 00 to 59 | Up to 2 digits for seconds. |
%T | Time in 24-hour notation. Equivalent to %H:%M:%S | Not Supported |
%u | Day of week as a decimal, 1 to 7, with Monday as 1. | Not Supported |
%U | This returns the week number, as 00 – 53, with the beginning of weeks as Sunday. | Not Supported |
%w | Day of week as a number, 0 to 6, with Sunday as 0. | Not Supported |
%W | This returns the week number, as 00 – 53, with the beginning of weeks as Monday. | Not Supported |
%x | The date for the computer’s locale. | Not Supported |
%X | The 12-hour clock time, including AM or PM (“11:51:02 AM”). | Hours:Minutes:Seconds [AM / PM] |
%y | Last two digits of the year ("16"). | Up to 4 digits are read, stopping at a separator or the end of the string, and mapped to a range of the current year minus 66 to current year plus 33. For example, in 2016, that's 1950 to 2049. Limitation with 6-Digit Dates Because up to 4 digits are read for the year, formats that are intended to have only 2 digits without a separator, such as a 6-digit date stamp (for example, %y%m%d for data resembling 170522 for May 22, 2017), are still read as 4 digits. To work around this limitation, you can...
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%Y | All four digits of the year ("2016"). | 2 or 4 digits are read. 2 digits are mapped to a range of the current year minus 66 to the current year plus 33. For example, in 2016, that's 1950 to 2049. |
%z | Offset from UTC time ("-600"). | Not Supported |
%Z | Full timezone name ("Mountain Daylight Time"). | Not Supported |
Separators
Separators are inserted between DateTime specifiers to form a format string.
Separator | Output from DateTimeFormat | Supported Input with DateTimeParse* |
|---|---|---|
/ | / | / or - |
- | - | / or - |
space | A Space | Any sequence of white space characters. |
%n | A Newline | Not Supported |
%t | A Tab | Not Supported |
other | Other characters, like comma, period, and colon. | Other characters, like comma, period, and colon. |
*DateTimeParse accepts forward slashes ( / ) and hyphens ( - ) interchangeably. However, commas, colons, and all other separators must match the incoming data exactly.
Language Parameters
These are the compatible values for the "l" (language) parameter that is supported with the DateTimeFormat and DateTimeParse functions.
English Language Name | Native Language Name | Language Code |
|---|---|---|
English | English | en |
Italian | Italiano | it |
French | Français | fr |
German | Deutsch | de |
Japanese | 日本語 | ja |
Spanish | Español | es |
Portuguese | Português | pt |
Chinese | 简体中文 | zh |
In addition to the above values, values with at least 2 characters in length that begin with any of the above are also acceptable. For example, eng, engl, engli, etc. for English or esp, espa, sp, spa, span, etc. for Spanish/Español.
DateTimeAdd
DateTimeAdd(dt,i,u): Adds a specific interval to a date-time value.
Parameters
dt: Date-time data, expressed as a selected column or a specified date-time value between quotes.
i: Positive or negative integer of time to add or subtract.
u: Date-time unit, specified between quotes: years, months, days, hours, minutes, or seconds.
Example
DateTimeAdd(DateTimeToday(), -1, "days") returns yesterday’s date.
DateTimeAdd(DateTimeFirstOfMonth(), 1, "months") returns the first of next month.
DateTimeAdd("2016-01-30", 1, "month") returns 2016-02-29 (because February does not have a 30th, but its last day that year is the 29th).
DateTimeAdd("2016-03-30", -1, "month") returns 2016-02-29 (because February does not have a 30th, but its last day that year is the 29th).
Read More
Any fraction in the duration is truncated. For example, you cannot add "1.5 hours". Instead, add "90 minutes".
Adding a unit does not change the value of smaller units. For example, adding hours does not change the value of minutes or seconds. Adding months does not change the day or time, unless the resulting month would not have such a day. In that case, it goes to the last day of that month.
DateTimeDay
DateTimeDay(dt): Returns the numeric value for the day of the month in a date-time value.
Parameters
dt: Date-time data, expressed as a selected column or a specified date-time value between quotes.
Example
DateTimeDay("2017-03-24 11:43:23")returns 24.
DateTimeDiff
DateTimeDiff(dt1,dt2,u): Subtracts the second argument from the first and returns it as an integer difference. The duration is returned as a number, not a string, in the specified time units.
Parameters
dt: Date-time data expressed as a selected column or a specified date-time value between quotes.
u: Date-time unit, specified between quotes: years, months, days, hours, minutes, or seconds.
Example
DateTimeDiff("2016-02-15 00:00:00", "2016-01-15 00:00:01", "Months")returns 1 (because the start and end are the same day of the month).
DateTimeDiff("2012-02-29","2011-03-01","years")returns 0 (even though 2012-02-29 is 365 days after 2011-03-01, February 29 is before March 1st, so "one year" has not yet been completed).
DateTimeDiff("2016-02-14", "2016-01-15", "Months")returns 0 (because the day in February is less than the day in January).
DateTimeDiff("2016-02-14 23:59:59", "2016-01-15 00:00:00", "Months")returns 0 (even though it is only one second short of reaching the required day).
DateTimeDiff('2017-02-28', '2016-02-29', 'Months')returns 11 (even though the 28th is the last day of February in 2017, the 28 is less than 29).
Read More
For Month and Year differences, a month is only counted when the end day reaches the start day, ignoring the time of day.
For precision of Day, Hour, Minute, and Second, the result is calculated precisely, then fractional parts are truncated, not rounded. Therefore...
DateTimeDiff(‘2016-01-01 00:59:59’, ‘2016-01-01 00:00:00’, ‘Hours’)is zero.DateTimeDiff(‘2016-01-01 23:59:59’, ‘2016-01-01 00:00:00’, ‘Days’)is zero.Precision names can be shortened to their first three characters (like 'sec' and 'min'), case is insensitive.
Be careful when storing time differences in seconds. An Int32 can only hold a difference of 68 years in seconds or 4082 years in minutes. You can use a Double or an Int64 to hold intervals between all supported dates.
DateTimeFirstOfMonth
DateTimeFirstOfMonth(): Returns the first day of the month, at midnight.
DateTimeFormat
DateTimeFormat(dt,f,l): Converts date-time data from ISO format to another specified format (f), in a specified language (l), for use by another application. Output to a string data type.
Parameters
dt: Date-time data, expressed as a selected column or a specified date-time value between quotes.
f: The format to which to convert the data, expressed in a format string.
l: Optional language parameter. The language parameter defaults to your selected Designer Cloud language. For example, if the language is set to French, the function reads DateTimeParse(dt,f,"Français") by default.
Examples
DateTimeFormat([DateTime_Out],"%d-%m-%Y")returns 22-04-2008 for the date April 22, 2008 (ISO format: 2008-04-22).
DateTimeFormat([DateTime_Out],"%A","Spanish")returns "martes" for the ISO date 2020-07-14 (where July 14th is a Tuesday).
DateTimeHour
DateTimeHour(dt): Returns the hour portion of the time in a date-time value.
Parameters
dt: Date-time data expressed as a selected column or a specified date-time value between quotes.
Example
DateTimeHour("2017-03-24 11:43:23")returns 11.
DateTimeHour("2017-03-24")returns 0, as midnight is the assumed hour when no time is specified with a date.
DateTimeLastOfMonth
DateTimeLastOfMonth(): Returns the last day of the current month, with the clock set to one second before the end of the day (23:59:59).
Designer Cloud uses the date and time when the formula is first parsed. In a batch process, this time is used with each new set of data. This allows for consistency if the process takes a long time.
DateTimeMinutes
DateTimeMinutes(dt): Returns the minutes portion of the time in a date-time value.
Parameters
dt: DateTime data, expressed as a selected column or a specified DateTime value between quotes.
Example
DateTimeMinutes("2017-03-24 11:43:23")returns 43.
DateTimeMonth
DateTimeMonth(dt): Returns the numeric value for the month in a date-time value.
Parameters
dt: Date-time data expressed as a selected column or a specified date-time value between quotes.
Example
DateTimeMonth("2017-03-24 11:43:23")returns 3.
DateTimeMonth("11:43:23")returns [Null], because the incoming data is not valid.
DateTimeSeconds
DateTimeSeconds(dt): Returns the seconds portion of the time in a date-time value.
Parameters
dt: Date-time data expressed as a selected column or a specified date-time value between quotes.
DateTimeToday
DateTimeToday(): Returns today’s date.
Expected Behavior: DateTimeToday Data Type
Despite its name, DateTimeToday()does not return a time value. Rather it only returns a Date with the current date. You can wrap the DateTimeToday()function in the ToDateTime()function to return a date-time value with the time set to midnight of the current day:
ToDateTime(DateTimeToday())
DateTimeYear
DateTimeYear(dt): Returns the numeric value for the year in a date-time value.
Parameters
dt: Date-time data expressed as a selected column or a specified date-time value between quotes.
Example
DateTimeYear("2017-03-24 11:43:23")returns 2017.
ToDate
ToDate(x): Converts a string, number, or date-time to a date.
An incoming string should be formatted as YYYY-MM-DD. For example, 2020-10-31.
An incoming number should be formatted as an Excel date format where the number represents the number of days since 01-01-1900. For example, 7000 which corresponds to 03-01-1919.
An incoming date-time should be formatted as YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss. For example, 2020-10-31 12:00:00.
Examples
ToDate(2020-10-31) returns 2020-10-31 as a date.
ToDate(7000) returns 1919-03-01 as a date.
ToDate(2020-10-31 12:00:00) returns 2020-10-31 as a date.
ToDateTime
DateTimeTrim(ToDateTime(x), t): Converts a string, number, or date value to a date-time. The ToDateTime function doesn't support precision higher than seconds. Limit Excel values to seconds representation (5 digits, up to 99999).
An incoming string should be formatted as YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss. For example, 2020-10-31 12:00:00.
An incoming number should be formatted as an Excel date-time format where the number represents the number of days since 01-01-1900. For example, 7000.354167 which corresponds to 03-01-1919 at 8:30 AM.
Example
ToDateTime('2020-10-31')returns 2020-10-31 00:00:00 as a date-time.ToDateTime(7000.354167)returns 1919-03-01 08:30:00 as a date-time.ToDateTime('2020-10-31 12:00:00')returns 2020-10-31 12:00:00 as a date-time.
DateTimeParse
DateTimeParse(dt, f): Converts a date string (string) with the specified format (f), in a specified language (l), to the standard ISO format (yyyy-mm-dd HH:MM:SS with optional date-time precision if applicable). If the specified format carries less precision, the output is truncated.
Parameters
dt: Date-time string data expressed as a selected field or a date-time string between quotes. The incoming data must be a String data type and can be in any format of date-time as long as this format agrees with the format you specify for the f parameter.f: The format of the incoming date string data that you are converting, expressed in a format string between quotes.
Example
DateTimeParse("2016/28-03","%Y/%d-%m")returns 2016-03-28.DateTimeParse('Oct 4, 22 11:59:57.99', '%b %d, %y %H:%M:%S')returns '2022-10-04 11:59:57'. The function drops the trailing digits.
DateTimeTrim
DateTimeTrim(dt, f): Removes unwanted portions of a date-time value and returns the modified date-time value.
Parameters
dt: Date-time data expressed as a selected column or a specified date-time value between quotes.f: Trim type. Options include:firstofmonth: Trim to the beginning of the month (this does the same as month).
lastofmonth: Extend to one second before the end of the last day of the month.
year: Trim to midnight on January 1st.
month: Trim to midnight on the first day of the month.
day: Trim to the day (i.e., midnight). This converts a date-time to a day with a time of zero (not a date).
hour: Trim to the hour.
minute: Trim to the minute.
seconds: Trim to the seconds and second fractions quotes using keywords from the Keywords for Date-Time Units section.
Trimming a date-time does not round the returned value. For example, the time 15:59:59 trimmed to the hour becomes 15:00:00, not 16:00:00.
Example
DateTimeTrim("2016-12-07 16:03:00","year")returns 2016-01-01 00:00:00.DateTimeTrim('2016-12-07 11:59:57.99','msec')returns 11:59:57.990.DateTimeTrim('2016-12-07 11:59:57.99',4)returns returns 11:59:57.9900.DateTimeTrim('2016-12-07 11:59:57.123456789','milliseconds')returns returns 11:59:57.123.