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Oliver_
Regular Visitor

Office 356 to Google Calendar - "Missing time zone"

Dear all,

 

I am new to Microsoft Flow and would like to create one flow that I thought was very easy: Creating, updating or deleting events from Office 365 in my Google Calendar.

 

I tried some templates, such as "Bestimmte Terminkategorie aus Office 365 in Google Kalender kopieren" (sorry, only could see German titles due to my settings), usually starting with V2 or V3, and I also created own flows.

 

I assume the flow that I need looks like this (I translated into English):

 

[Office symbol] When a new event is created, updated or deleted (V3)

     x    Calendar ID: "Kalender"

                                    |
                                   \/

[Google symbol] Create, update or delete

     x    Calendar ID: [name of my Google calendar]

     x    starting time, end time etc.: relations accordingly

 

After trying it out - namely entering a new event in my Outlook Calendar, there is a green checkmark next to the first step (so I assume Microsoft Flow recognizes the event) but a red cross next to the 2. step - so apparently it or Google has has an issue with creating the event.

 

The error message is "Missing time zone definition for start time."

 

One of the solutions I found in this forum is adding a "Z" behind the starting and ending time, which did not work for me. I literally added a "Z" in the according fields right behind those blue boxes but nothing changed.

 

I also tried changing the time zone from "UTC" to "Roundtrip for Date/Time". But I received the same error message.

 

I’d be very happy, if someone could help me out here. Please let me know if you need any further information.

 

Thank you very much and kind regards from Berlin,

Oliver

15 REPLIES 15
edgonzales
Most Valuable Professional
Most Valuable Professional

@Oliver_ 

Hi there.  It would be helpful to see the data coming in and out of the steps to see how it is formatted.


One trick that I've used instead of formatdate() is to use the action "Convert Timezone" and leave your source and target the same, but edit the format there.  It's an easy way to do the same thing without having to know expressions.

 

Keep us posted either way.

-Ed-

 

 

If this reply has answered your question or resolved your challenge, please consider marking it as a Solution. This helps other users find it more easily via search.

Hi Ed,

 

thanx for your reply! I hope it's fine that I copy paste the data right here. This is what it looked like without any time conversion:

 

When an event is created (V3)

Überschriften/Headlines

Pragma
no-cache
Retry-After
15
Vary
Accept-Encoding
x-ms-request-id
2bacbe72-c2c9-44f5-974d-eb947bc4dd76
Strict-Transport-Security
max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains
X-Content-Type-Options
nosniff
X-Frame-Options
DENY
Timing-Allow-Origin
*
x-ms-apihub-cached-response
true
Cache-Control
no-store, no-cache
Date
Mon, 16 Sep 2019 13:13:38 GMT
Set-Cookie
ARRAffinity=24c0c5d453cea1372d4fb775ae15489ca76fdd76419734e017ad94ffc035934d;Path=/;HttpOnly;Domain=office365-ne.azconn-ne-01.p.azurewebsites.net
Content-Type
application/json; charset=utf-8
Expires
-1
Content-Length
2065
 
Körper/Body
{
"subject": "test 02",
"start": "2019-09-21T12:30:00.0000000",
"end": "2019-09-21T14:30:00.0000000",
"body": "<html>\r\n<head>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\">\r\n<meta content=\"text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\">\r\n<meta name=\"ProgId\" content=\"Word.Document\">\r\n<meta name=\"Generator\" content=\"Microsoft Word 15\">\r\n<meta name=\"Originator\" content=\"Microsoft Word 15\">\r\n<style>\r\n<!--\r\n@font-face\r\n\t{font-family:\"Cambria Math\"}\r\n@font-face\r\n\t{font-family:Calibri}\r\np.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal\r\n\t{margin:0cm;\r\n\tmargin-bottom:.0001pt;\r\n\tfont-size:11.0pt;\r\n\tfont-family:\"Calibri\",sans-serif}\r\na:link, span.MsoHyperlink\r\n\t{color:#0563C1;\r\n\ttext-decoration:underline}\r\na:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed\r\n\t{color:#954F72;\r\n\ttext-decoration:underline}\r\nspan.E-MailFormatvorlage17\r\n\t{font-family:\"Calibri\",sans-serif;\r\n\tcolor:windowtext}\r\n.MsoChpDefault\r\n\t{font-family:\"Calibri\",sans-serif}\r\n@page WordSection1\r\n\t{margin:70.85pt 70.85pt 2.0cm 70.85pt}\r\ndiv.WordSection1\r\n\t{}\r\n-->\r\n</style>\r\n</head>\r\n<body lang=\"DE\" link=\"#0563C1\" vlink=\"#954F72\" style=\"\">\r\n<div class=\"WordSection1\">\r\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&nbsp;</p>\r\n</div>\r\n</body>\r\n</html>\r\n",
"isHtml": true,
"responseType": "none",
"responseTime": "0001-01-01T00:00:00+00:00",
"id": "AAMkAGRhMDkyMjIwLTNhZjctNDQzMC1hMjJmLTcxODczYWFmMzU3ZgBGAAAAAAB5TAcHrEiITJfQErW9z12vBwC1V0B6EeyVTKAQCv8MtflpAAAAAAENAAC1V0B6EeyVTKAQCv8MtflpAAAAAIDTAAA=",
"createdDateTime": "2019-09-16T13:13:33.5968404+00:00",
"lastModifiedDateTime": "2019-09-16T13:13:35.1011671+00:00",
"organizer": "abc@abc.com",
"timeZone": "UTC",
"seriesMasterId": null,
"categories": [],
"requiredAttendees": "abc@abc.com;",
"optionalAttendees": "",
"resourceAttendees": "",
"location": "",
"importance": "normal",
"isAllDay": false,
"recurrence": "none",
"recurrenceEnd": null,
"numberOfOccurences": null,
"reminderMinutesBeforeStart": 15,
"showAs": "busy",
"responseRequested": true
}
 
Create Event
 
BadRequest

 

Eingaben/Input

Kalender-ID: [name of my Google Calendar]

Startzeit/starting time: 2019-09-21T12:30:00.0000000

Endzeit/ ending time: 2019-09-21T14:30:00.0000000

Titel: Test 02

Speicherort/location: -/-

Teilnehmer/participants: abc@abc.com

 
Output
Statuscode/status code: 400
 
Überschriften/Headlines

Key

value

 

Transfer-Encoding

chunked

Vary

Origin,X-Origin

X-Content-Type-Options

nosniff

X-Frame-Options

SAMEORIGIN

X-XSS-Protection

1; mode=block

Alt-Svc

quic=":443"; ma=2592000; v="46,43,39"

Timing-Allow-Origin

*

x-ms-apihub-cached-response

false

Cache-Control

max-age=0, private

Date

Mon, 16 Sep 2019 13:13:38 GMT

Content-Type

application/json

Expires

Mon, 16 Sep 2019 13:13:38 GMT

Content-Length

542

 

Körper/Body

{
"error": {
"errors": [
{
"domain": "global",
"reason": "required",
"message": "Missing time zone definition for start time."
},
{
"domain": "global",
"reason": "required",
"message": "Missing time zone definition for end time."
},
{
"domain": "global",
"reason": "invalid",
"message": "Invalid attendee email."
}
],
"code": 400,
"message": "Missing time zone definition for start time."
}
}
______________________________________________________________________________________
 
I hope this already helps a bit. If you need similar data for the version including time conversion, please let me know.
 
Thanx and Best,
Oliver
 
edgonzales
Most Valuable Professional
Most Valuable Professional

@Oliver_ 

No worries at all.  Let's take a look at the whole flow up to this point.  Can you post a screenshot of the Flow?

 

-Ed-

Thanx @edgonzales , that's great,

 

here are screenshots of the structure of the flow and of the analysis of a test I just made:

 

OScreenshot Flow 01 (2 Steps inkl. Änderungen) -  Flow.jpgScreenshot Flow 01 (2 Steps inkl. Änderungen) - Details 1.jpgScreenshot Flow 01 (2 Steps inkl. Änderungen) - Details 2.jpgScreenshot Flow 01 (2 Steps inkl. Änderungen) - Details 3.jpgScreenshot Flow 01 (2 Steps inkl. Änderungen) - Details 4.jpg

 

Contrary to the flow I discribed earlier this one is based on V2 (event created, changed or deleted) and not V3 (When an event is created (V3)

 

And for some reason, I did not find the text "missing time zone" anymore. No clue why. But as you can see, it still does not work. 🙂

 

Looking foreward to hearing from you,

Cheers,

Oliver

 

Hi,

 

something that I have been thinking about and played around with is the date-time-format that Microsoft provides (and accepts) and that Google calendar needs.

 

According to this website https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/37118?hl=de Google requires this format (at least when importing events from Excel):

 

Screenshot Flow Import Google Events from Excel.jpg

DD/MM/YYYY and hh:mm a

 

I'm not sure, if my "German" version of Microsoft flow can create this. I tried out to enter this user defined format string:

 

formatDateTime('DD/MM/YYYY and hh:mm a')

 

But when trying it out, Microsoft Flow complain sabout an "InvalidTemplate": The date.time-format does not comply with ISO 8601, which asks for something like DD-MM-YYYY.

 

Not sure, if this is of any relevance but I can imagine date formatting is an issue here.

 

Regards,

Oliver

edgonzales
Most Valuable Professional
Most Valuable Professional

@Oliver_ 

Hi there - Interesting issue.  I'll look more into the rest of the Flow in a bit, but the date formatting should be lowercase EXCEPT for month and it won't like the 'and' bit either.  Because I'm not great with expressions, I use the Convert Time Zone to do the same thing:

20190919a.PNG

 

You can use whatever source/destination you'd like, or keep everything UTC.  The data out, looks like this:

20190919b.PNG

 

Which should match your Google requirements.  I'll look at the other stuff bit deeper in a bit.  Keep us posted.

-Ed-

 

If this reply has answered your question or resolved your challenge, please consider marking it as a Solution. This helps other users find it more easily via search.

 

 

Hi,

 

sorry, I didn't actually say that; I was also using the "Convert Time Zone" tool. There is an option to enter custom time formats.

 

But I also tried most of the standard formats (only left out the ones without time) - without any success.

 

So far, I have no other ideas, what to do. I am very surprised, how this seemingly easy task can be that difficult to realize. I mean, it shouldn't be rocket science exporting and updating events from Outlook to Google, right? Anyway, I very much hope it can be done.

 

Cheers,

Oliver

 

There's a convertion action

 

Screen Shot 2019-11-05 at 12.38.21 PM.png

 

Use that then, in the first field get the date from the original action 

then on the time zone fields use your time zone

but in the format go to the last option "custom"

 

there input yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss-00:00

 

Then your google calendar action select the output of this instead of the original one

 

Screen Shot 2019-11-05 at 12.52.20 PM.png

I am having the exact same error! There used to be a template to do this, but now it is gone.

Why is there even a need for this conversion? It makes no sense to how this system should work.

Is there a clear answer to getting this Office 365 Calendar > Google Calendar flow to work?

Sorry but im still a bit confused as to what i need to do to make this work?

The exact error is the same as the OP.

{
"error": {
"errors": [
{
"domain": "global",
"reason": "required",
"message": "Missing time zone definition for start time."
},
{
"domain": "global",
"reason": "required",
"message": "Missing time zone definition for end time."
}
],
"code": 400,
"message": "Missing time zone definition for start time."
}
}
Anonymous
Not applicable

I figured it out. There's an action called "Convert time zone". I just filled in the fields as shown two messages above this one, only using UTC time (zero offset) for the time zone in each field. Also it's a good idea to rename your action so that you know which ones correspond to the start and end times.

Doing this, my flow managed to export an Office 365 calendar entry to my Google calendar successfully.

Hi, can you show is a screenshot please?
Anonymous
Not applicable

OK, here's a screenshot. What you see below are cases from a "switch" control action to handle cases where an Office calendar entry is added, updated or deleted. In the 'added' or 'updated' cases, I have time zone conversions for the start and end time. I renamed the 'Convert time zone' action to 'Convert time zone (add start)', 'Convert time zone (update start)', etc. Then in the 'Create Event' action for Google calendar, the start and end times are the converted times.

My whole flow isn't fully working yet, but I have verified that the calendar entry now gets created without an error from Google calendar.

 

Screen Shot 2020-03-06 at 2.40.26 PM.png

Dear friend,

 

I got it. You should format in the conversion this way:

2009-06-15T13:45:30[s]

 

then insert in the create even

"End time"Z (a Z at the end)

 

This works.

Anonymous
Not applicable

If you're still interested, I documented how I created a flow that syncs my O365 calendar to a Google calendar (one-way sync). It works OK for adding events, and it also works for updating and removing event that originated with me. However, updates and removals don't seem to be reliable for events that originate from other people (the calendar gets duplicated events instead, which I don't mind as I mainly want to see the busy times).

 

You can read my write-up here: https://www.nablu.com/2020/03/syncing-office-365-to-google-calendar.html

jamesrobert15
Regular Visitor

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