Outlook Calendar Sync using UTC time zone

Troy McGee
Troy McGee Member Posts: 2 VERIFIED MEMBER
edited June 11 in Sales CRM #1

Calendar items synced with Outlook show the UTC time with "Time zones" flag enabled in Outlook.  This causes confusion especially when sharing calendar items with others that will see the UTC time.  I have used other applications in the past that did not have this issue.

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  • Vladimir Dubakin
    Vladimir Dubakin Posts: 59 VERIFIED MEMBER
    100 Comments Pipedrive Team
    edited February 2021 #2

    Hey hey, Troy!

    Vladimir from Pipedrive management team is here to help!

    Hope you are having a lovely day, and, meanwhile let me please explain what is the usual way we recomment to set up hotmail/outlook calendar which is synced with Pipedrive!

    First of all - all the integrations that connect to Pipedrive are using API and as a standard all of them parse time in UTC, so that other programs can adjust the time zone accordingly.

    I am not sure about the flag "Time zones" in Outlook - but, there is a possibility to select the time zone in the calendar here: 

    image

    So, once you have selected the right time zone - all the events will be adjusted to your time zone once they come through from Pipedrive!

    But, if that still does not work for you - can you please be kind and address it to our support?

    You can either use in-app chat or send an email to support@pipedrive.com and our experts will look into it

    Hope that helps! 

    Kind regards,

    Vladimir

  • Troy McGee
    Troy McGee Member Posts: 2 VERIFIED MEMBER
    edited February 2021 #3

    I am using the Outlook application for windows and the time zone has already been set.  I will message support and see if they can help me.

     

    image
  • Al Pickering
    Al Pickering Member Posts: 1 VERIFIED MEMBER
    edited February 2022 #4

    I am experiencing the same issue.  I have check both my Outlook client and the O365 instance and both are set to Eastern Time zone, as is Pipedrive.  Calendar invites sent from Pipedrive appear to be in the correct timeslot (that is Eastern Time zone) when viewed in the Outlook calendar view, yet when the individual invite is opened the time reflects UTC.

  • Filipe Portela
    Filipe Portela Posts: 18 VERIFIED MEMBER
    10 Comments Second Anniversary Pipedrive Team Photogenic
    edited May 2021 #5

    I am experiencing the same issue.  I have check both my Outlook client and the O365 instance and both are set to Eastern Time zone, as is Pipedrive.  Calendar invites sent from Pipedrive appear to be in the correct timeslot (that is Eastern Time zone) when viewed in the Outlook calendar view, yet when the individual invite is opened the time reflects UTC.

    Hi Al! Could you please bring this up to our Support team either via live chat from within your account or via Support@pipedrive.com? 

     

    We can have a further look into this for you and see if all settings are okay and how to approach it!

    Have a lovely day!

  • Simon Schoop
    Simon Schoop Member Posts: 6 VERIFIED MEMBER
    First Comment
    edited February 2022 #6

    I have the exact same issue like Al and Troy....

     

     

  • Kreete K
    Kreete K Pipedrive Team Posts: 354 PIPEDRIVE TEAM
    Fourth Anniversary 100 Comments 25 Likes 5 Answers
    edited May 2021 #7

    I have the exact same issue like Al and Troy....

     

     

    Hi @Simon Schoop!
    Sorry to hear about that! Could you please reach out to our Support team via chat or email support@pipedrive.com, so they would be able to check your account and verify everything is set up correctly. The team can then investigate further. Thank you!

  • Mike Newcomer
    Mike Newcomer Member Posts: 1 VERIFIED MEMBER
    edited June 2021 #8

    I am following this. as I am having the same problem.

  • Adrian Holtmann
    Adrian Holtmann Member Posts: 1 VERIFIED MEMBER
    edited July 2021 #9

    Hi fellow Pipedrive users,

    I am facing the same problem and no settings neither in Outlook nor Pipedrive could solve the issue.

    Time zones are set up correctly (Berlin):

    image
    image

    Setting up a new activity in Pipedrive automatically leads to an entry with UTC as selected timezone after syncing has completed. 

    image
    image

    Any advices for me, dear Pipedrive team? 

     

    Best regards

    Adrian

  • Bernd Auer
    Bernd Auer Member Posts: 349 VERIFIED MEMBER
    Fourth Anniversary 100 Up Votes 100 Comments 25 Likes
    edited July 2022 #10

    Very rarely but sometimes people have the problem that they create a calendar entry in Pipedrive, but it shows up in Outlook in a different time zone.

    This is obviously due to Outlook. Pipedrive has created an entry about this in the Microsoft Tech Community: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-developer-platform/outlook-calendar-display-event-times-in-user-s-timezone-in-edit/idi-p/2920194#M430.

    If you are concerned too, you could upvote there :) Then hopefully the friends from Microsoft will take care of it.

  • Sarah Higgins_74095
    Sarah Higgins_74095 Member Posts: 3 VERIFIED MEMBER
    First Comment
    edited June 11 #11

    Any updates on this? While it's easy (and probably also accurate) to blame Microsoft for this issue, I'd like to see Pipedrive at least attempting to try and find a workaround from their end as well. 

  • Arnold Steenbeek
    Arnold Steenbeek Member Posts: 6 VERIFIED MEMBER
    Third Anniversary Photogenic First Comment
    edited June 11 #12

    Very rarely .. Even after recent update MS 365 the bug still remains. 

    There is a manual workaround which is pretty silly but it works:

    delete timezones > make appointment 'all day' (which deletes the time set)

    set the time and then it's ok 

  • Ted Youn
    Ted Youn Member Posts: 118 VERIFIED MEMBER
    Fourth Anniversary 10 Comments 5 Likes 5 Up Votes
    edited June 11 #13

    I just found out that my client has the same issue. Although my client creates an activity in KST (Korean standard time zone), it shows up in Outlook with UTC.

    This is a serious problem for Korean customers as we have nine-hour time difference between KST and UTC.

  • Kirsten Tange
    Kirsten Tange Member Posts: 8 VERIFIED MEMBER
    Second Anniversary Photogenic First Comment

    We are facing the same issue, and it's so annoying! Please figure this out!

  • Liam
    Liam Member Posts: 2 VERIFIED MEMBER
    First Comment

    Hello,

    Our company is unable to send calendar invites from Pipedrive because the timezone doesn't synchronize with outlook. When ever we send an invite in the local time zone Outlook will receive it in UTC and there doesn't seem to be a way around it. Have talked with Pipedrive who have raised a ticket with Microsoft over a year ago to resolve the issue but it doesn't seem like its going to get fixed anytime soon. Wondering if anyone figured a workaround for this?

    It means we have to schedule meetings via Outlook and not through pipedrive which is terrible for reporting!

    https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-developer-platform/outlook-calendar-display-event-times-in-user-s-timezone-in-edit/idi-p/2920194


  • Andreia Costa
    Andreia Costa Pipedrive Team Posts: 170 PIPEDRIVE TEAM
    Third Anniversary 100 Comments 5 Answers 5 Likes
    edited June 11 #16

    Hey @Liam 👋

    Indeed this is causing some confusion and I'm not aware of any workaround, but I do hope that maybe someone in the community can offer an idea. I would just like to reinforce the need to have upvotes here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-developer-platform/outlook-calendar-display-event-times-in-user-s-timezone-in-edit/idi-p/2920194 as this will bring visibility over to Microsoft and hopefully, they can resolve the issue on their side.

    To any community member with the same issue, please upvote the link above 🙇‍♀️

    Thank you,

  • MBrown
    MBrown Member Posts: 63 VERIFIED MEMBER
    25 Likes 10 Comments First Anniversary Photogenic

    Same problem here, did anyone else have this fixed?

  • MBrown
    MBrown Member Posts: 63 VERIFIED MEMBER
    25 Likes 10 Comments First Anniversary Photogenic
    edited June 11 #18

    Hi Andrea,

    I never used to have this issue with Hubspot, or any other app that integrates with Outlook. We are only having this issue with Pipedrive.

    Mike

  • MBrown
    MBrown Member Posts: 63 VERIFIED MEMBER
    25 Likes 10 Comments First Anniversary Photogenic

    I did that, and they told me they could not do anything about it. He said they logged a ticket with MS, then showed me a link to the microsoft community which MS never even look at. Sorry Pipedrive, this is a deal breaker for us. If the calendars don't sync properly with Outlook it is virtually un-usable!!

  • MBrown
    MBrown Member Posts: 63 VERIFIED MEMBER
    25 Likes 10 Comments First Anniversary Photogenic
    edited June 11 #20

    Just an update, because neither Microsoft or Pipedrive want to own or fix this. When you open the Calendar event in Outlook, check on the all-day checkbox, then check it back off, save the event and it fixes it.

    Not an ideal fix, but maybe it will help someone until the developers on either side decide this is important enough to deal with.

  • MBrown
    MBrown Member Posts: 63 VERIFIED MEMBER
    25 Likes 10 Comments First Anniversary Photogenic

    Just an update, because neither Microsoft or Pipedrive want to own nor fix this. When you open the Calendar event in Outlook, check on the all-day checkbox, then check it back off, save the event and it fixes it.

    Not ideal, but maybe it will help someone until the developers on either side decide this is important enough to deal with.

  • MBrown
    MBrown Member Posts: 63 VERIFIED MEMBER
    25 Likes 10 Comments First Anniversary Photogenic
    edited April 24 #22

    Hi Everyone,

    This issue has been discussed several times from multiple users (see below). Time is being shown in UTC in outlook with the incorrect time. It is also showing the wrong time with calendar invites to the clients.

    We keep getting referred to support who basically say that it's an issue with outlook.

    We never had this problem with Hubspot and I can see other software that sunc calendars with outlook have had the same issue but they managed to resolve it.

    Can someone at Pipedrive please take ownership of this and have it fixed. If the calendars do not sync properly without manual intervention, then it makes the whole thing useless.

    Mike

    P.S. This is across all of our users.

  • Manuel Oliveira
    Manuel Oliveira Admin Posts: 1,283 COMMUNITY MANAGER
    1000 Comments 250 Likes 25 Answers Third Anniversary
    edited June 11 #23

    Hi @MBrown thank you for the feedback!

    Our engineers have looked into the matter, and though it seems simple at first sight, there's a technical obstacle affecting this behavior from Microsoft's side. Our team raised a a feature request ticket for Microsoft that you can find, comment and upvote here.

    We will continue investigating the matter, and I have converted your post to a feedback post so more users can upvote and share their experience with this particular behavior in this thread. I also recommend that you check out this past conversation where members discuss a few workarounds.

  • MBrown
    MBrown Member Posts: 63 VERIFIED MEMBER
    25 Likes 10 Comments First Anniversary Photogenic
    edited June 11 #24

    @Manuel Oliveira Thanks Manuel, I have seen this before. Unfortunately, in case you are not aware, the chances of the Microsoft Dev team even looking at that page let alone responding to it are about 0.000000001%

  • MitchW
    MitchW Member Posts: 1 VERIFIED MEMBER
    First Comment

    Was there a solution to this?

    It's still happening to me.

    When someone in my team shares a calendar invite it comes through in universal time

  • MBrown
    MBrown Member Posts: 63 VERIFIED MEMBER
    25 Likes 10 Comments First Anniversary Photogenic

    Nope, no one want to take ownership of it. Microsoft is deafly silent, and PD is blaming outlook, though I am unsure how the 100's or 1000's of other apps that sync with outlook are doing it without a problem.

    We now using the Microsoft 365 booking page for appointments and meetings, and only using PD for activities with no time set.

  • Susie_F
    Susie_F Member Posts: 3 VERIFIED MEMBER
    First Comment

    Hi, I am also having this problem and have emailed support last month, but no-one has got back to me. Is there a solution for this?

  • TrentS
    TrentS Member Posts: 2 VERIFIED MEMBER
    Third Anniversary Combo Breaker First Comment Photogenic

    We also have had this problem. As a result of nothing been done about it we are shifting our entire company to Hubspot.