How to delay a Power Automate flow execution till a specified date and time

This is one of the most common requirement in flow/ Power Automate. And apparently it’s quite an easy one and straightforward as well. However more often than not, even after configuration it does not work correctly. I have written a blog sometime back on the same topic describing on how we can implement timeout conditions in Power Automate similar to classic workflows in CDS. Quite frequently I get comments that it is not working as expected.

So in this blog I am going to discuss on the following requirements

• How to stop a power automate flow execution till a specified date and time?
• Why “Delay Until” conditions frequently fail in Power Automate even after properly configuring the same?

First and foremost, let’s explore the Delay Until condition.

Let say I want to stop the flow execution till 11:30 PM. I use the Delay until step and specify 11:30 PM in Timestamp.

All set and done, I start executing the flow. But wait! When I start executing the flow, the flow step is waiting beyond the time specified which is quite surprising to me. The clock has passed 11:30 PM but still the flow is waiting.

The issue happened because of timezone. When I specified the date and time in the “Delay Until” action, the flow considered it in UTC timezone. While my intention was to delay the step till 11:30 PM India time. But in reality the flow was waiting till 11:30 PM UTC time.

So how do I tackle this. Well it’s quite easy. We need to make sure we pass the corresponding time in UTC in delay until step. Below is the formula to do the same.

convertToUtc('2020-11-09T23:30:00','India Standard Time','yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ssZ')

I am basically converting my desired time to UTC and specifying the value in the Delay Until step.

Hope this helped!

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Debajit Dutta
Business Solutions MVP