Zapier: Add a Timestamp to any Zap

So you’re building a Zap and you need to add a timestamp to an Action, but your Trigger doesn’t include a timestamp. You’re in luck! Zapier has a handy-dandy built-in method for doing this:

{{zap_meta_human_now}}

For example, I just connected up a Webhooks subscription using Zapier’s built-in “Catch Hooks” Trigger.

The REST API I connected to it supplies several data fields, but there’s no record of when the Webhook fires (there’s no date, time, or timestamp in the incoming webhook).

As I had already connected the Trigger to a Google Sheets action (“create a new row”), it occurred to me that there should be a way to just add a timestamp column in Google Sheets and then automate a timestamp when the new row gets created.

Enter Zapier’s fantastic documentation. I thought I might have to use one of Zapier’s nifty built-in “Filter” apps, but actually, all it required was copying and pasting the value above into the Zap Action’s field that correlates to the new column I added in Google Sheets!

Zapier documented this in the Advanced Tips –> Modifying Dates & Times section of their documentation.

As soon as you paste `{{zap_meta_human_now}}` into the field in your Zap, Zapier transforms it like this:

This automagically showed up in Google Sheets like this:

Time Zone Considerations

One “gotcha” that didn’t occur to me until this Zap started running: I didn’t have a timezone preference set in my Zapier account, so it defaulted to UTC time. Thankfully, this is configurable!

Not only is the time zone in your Zapier account configurable, but you can use multiple time zones in the same account if you need to by using a more specific “timestamp” formula. For example:

{{zap_meta_edt_iso}}

This will spit out a “machine-readable” (ISO 8601) timestamp, including the offset for the timezone you choose. The example above uses edt for “Eastern Daylight Time.” This allows for a little more clarity so that you don’t have a situation where the app receiving your data also offsets for timezone, which would goof up the accuracy of your time (and date).

All the options are at the link reference above.

Reason #537 to Love Zapier

This is a small thing, but it’s a big deal in a situation like the one I was in today. One more reason to love Zapier!