Date & Time Tools

Parse, format, and calculate dates and times.

Overview

The Date & Time Tools connector is a built-in utility that handles every date and time operation a workflow needs: parsing the dozens of formats that APIs and CSVs throw at you, formatting timestamps for downstream systems, doing date math (add, subtract, diff), converting between timezones, and breaking timestamps apart into named parts.

Use it whenever a workflow crosses a timezone boundary, computes a deadline, filters by a date range, or needs to compare two timestamps from different systems. Almost every real workflow that touches orders, schedules, or expirations leans on this connector somewhere.

What You Can Do

The Date & Time Tools connector exposes these tools:

now - Return the current timestamp, optionally in a named timezone.
parse - Parse a date string in any common format into a normalized timestamp.
format - Render a timestamp using a format pattern (e.g. YYYY-MM-DD).
add - Add a duration (days, hours, minutes, etc.) to a timestamp.
subtract - Subtract a duration from a timestamp.
diff - Return the difference between two timestamps in a chosen unit.
start-of - Round a timestamp down to the start of a unit (day, month, year).
end-of - Round a timestamp up to the end of a unit.
parts - Split a timestamp into year, month, day, hour, minute, second, weekday.
timezone - Convert a timestamp between two timezones.
list-timezones - List all IANA timezone identifiers.
relative - Render a relative time string ("3 hours ago", "in 2 days").
unix - Convert between a timestamp and a Unix epoch number.
is-before - Test whether one timestamp is before another.
is-after - Test whether one timestamp is after another.
is-between - Test whether a timestamp falls between two others.

Authentication and Setup

No connection or authentication is required. These tools are built into the platform and available in every workflow by default - just drop a Connector node onto the canvas and pick the tool you need.

Using in a Workflow

Add a Connector node, select Date & Time Tools, and pick a mode:

Direct Mode - Best for fixed transforms like formatting timestamps before pushing to a destination, or computing deadlines from a known start.
Agent Mode - Useful when the agent has to interpret a vague time expression ("last quarter", "this Friday") and turn it into a concrete range.

Always work in UTC internally and only convert with timezone on the way out to a UI or human-facing field. It avoids almost every cross-system date bug.

Tips

Use parse even when you trust the source. It normalizes everything into the same internal form, so downstream format and diff calls behave predictably.
Cache now at workflow start. Calling now multiple times in a long workflow gives slightly different values; bind it once and reuse.
Use start-of for date-only comparisons. "Today" usually means "from midnight today" - start-of: day in the right timezone is the right way to compute it.
Pair with Condition nodes. is-before / is-after return booleans that plug straight into Condition node branches.
Pick IANA names, not abbreviations. Use Australia/Sydney, not AEDT - abbreviations are ambiguous and don't handle DST.

Common Pitfalls

Daylight saving transitions. Adding "1 day" across a DST boundary is not always 24 hours. add with a day unit handles this; adding 86400 seconds does not.
Locale-specific formats. 03/04/2025 is ambiguous (March 4 or April 3). Always specify the format string when parsing.
Unix epoch units. Some systems give seconds, others milliseconds. Off by 1000x is a classic bug. Check unix options.
"Naive" timestamps. Strings without a timezone get assumed UTC. If the source is in local time, attach the right timezone on parse.
Year-month-day vs day-month-year. ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ssZ) on the wire is the only format that's unambiguous - prefer it everywhere.

Common Use Cases

For technical API details and field specifications, see the Date & Time Tools documentation.