Understanding Dates in Funnel Date Stamps

Funnel date stamps can be stored in date or DateTime fields.

Dates do NOT store timezone information. So whatever date is set, will appear as that date everywhere. There’s no way for a funnel date stored in a date field to appear differently to different users around the globe based on their time zone.

If you want to store the “true” time for a funnel, it must use a DateTime field. Only DateTime fields will appear adjusted based on the user’s time zone.

When we store a date field, it is almost always stored based on the timezone of the current user. There are rare occasions with funnels where, if a lock error occurs and a retry is needed and the funnel assignment is delayed, that it would be set in the timezone of the async user. But that should be rare.

Consider the following hypothetical situation: A user in Australia is 10:00am Thursday morning and a user in San Jose is Noon Wednesday morning. If the Australian user performs an action that sets a funnel date stage, it will be stored as Thursday. The San Jose user will see that record and be astonished that the funnel stage is set to the next day! But it is accurate.

If, however, the funnel date was stored in a DateTime field, the date would appear the same for both users - the Australian would see it as Thursday and the Californian would see it as Wednesday. The funnel stage would always reflect the time zone of the user.

There is no perfect solution to this issue that will satisfy everyone. It’s just the nature of how timezones and dates work.

In the future, Full Circle may look at offering an option in the future to specify a standard timezone for conversions from DateTime to Date. Even that would not provide any sort of perfect solution, however - in our scenario, the Australian might achieve a funnel state on Thursday and be shocked to see that it was stored as Wednesday!