Flow Designer condition using current time executes in UTC causing incorrect comparison with time

kumarakshay
Tera Contributor

3 hours ago

Hello Experts,

We are trying to implement logic in Flow Designer for Visitor Management.

Requirement:
If the visitor's Expected Departure time has passed the current time, then we need to update an Overdue flag in the Visitor Registration record.

Current implementation:
We created a Flow Designer condition that checks whether Expected Departure is at or after the current minute.

Issue:
We noticed that the Flow seems to evaluate the time in UTC, while the Expected Departure value is being interpreted based on the user/session time zone. Because of this, the condition evaluates incorrectly and the Overdue flag is set to true earlier than expected.



Questions:

  1. Is this expected behavior for Flow Designer time comparisons?
  2. What is the recommended way to compare Date/Time fields with the current time in Flow Designer when time zones are involved?
  3. Is there a configuration or best practice to handle this within Flow Designer conditions?

Any guidance or recommended implementation pattern would be appreciated.

 

@_raj_esh @Arvid 

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Naveen20
ServiceNow Employee

an hour ago

 

This is expected behavior. Flow Designer conditions evaluate Date/Time fields in UTC internally, but the "current time" dynamic value and display can be influenced by the session/user time zone, causing mismatches in comparisons.

Recommended approach: Replace the Flow Designer condition with a Script Step (Run Script action) where you explicitly control the comparison in UTC:

var now = new GlideDateTime(); // always UTC
var departure = new GlideDateTime(fd_data.trigger.current.expected_departure); // stored UTC

outputs.is_overdue = (departure.compareTo(now) < 0);

Both GlideDateTime values will be in UTC, eliminating the timezone discrepancy. Use the is_overdue output as a condition for your subsequent Update Record step.

Why this works: ServiceNow stores all Date/Time fields in UTC in the database. The mismatch you're seeing happens because Flow Designer's built-in condition builder can apply timezone conversion on display values before comparing. A Script Step with GlideDateTime bypasses that layer entirely and compares raw UTC-to-UTC.

Alternative (no-code): If you want to stay condition-based, convert your Expected Departure to a duration/offset using a Script Step first (e.g., calculate the difference in seconds between departure and now), then use a simple numeric condition like difference <= 0 to flag overdue. This keeps the condition logic visual while the timezone math stays in script.

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