Deluge Tips & Tricks: Mastering dates and times

Deluge Tips & Tricks: Mastering dates and times

Hello everyone!

We're bringing back our Deluge Tips & Tricks series, where we show you how to make the most of Deluge for achieving a wide range of use cases.

Working with dates and times is a fundamental part of almost any business application. Whether you're timestamping entries, scheduling tasks, or sending notifications, knowing how to manipulate date and time values in Deluge is a crucial skill.
 
Deluge provides simple yet powerful functions to help you fetch the current time, reformat values, and perform time zone conversions. This post highlights how Deluge can become your go-to for handling many different use cases.
 
Zoho variables 
Let's begin with the basics. Zoho variables are special predefined variables in Deluge that can be used across different Zoho services. Currently, Deluge offers two such variables related to dates and times: zoho.currentdate and zoho.currenttime. These return the current date, and the current date and time respectively, based on the format you've configured in the settings of the respective Zoho service. For more information, visit the Zoho Variables help doc.

While the aforementioned Zoho variables are your go-to for fetching the current date and time, their default format is primarily useful for basic logging. But, in many scenarios, you may need to display this information in a different format or even convert it to another time zone. Fortunately, Deluge has you covered. Let's take a look at how:

Customizing date and time formats   

Converting date formats
Different users often prefer different date formats when entering data, and Deluge makes it easy to handle these variations. For example, if you have a date stored as a string and need to convert it into a date variable, either to perform calculations or reformat it, you can use the toDate() and toString() built-in functions.

Here's a sample script which converts date from the dd/mm/yyyy format to the dd-mm-yyyy:

// Convert a string to a date variable

dateAsString = "03/12/2024 03:15:35";

dateObject = totime(dateAsString, "dd/MM/yyyy hh:mm:ss");

info dateObject;

// Convert the date object back to a string in a new format

info dateObject.toString("dd-MM-yyyy hh:mm:ss");

 

Converting time formats (24 hours to 12 hours)

You may sometimes need to switch between a 24-hour format and a 12-hour format when using zoho.currenttime. Thankfully, Deluge makes this simple. Here’s how you can do it:

currentTime = zoho.currenttime;

info currentTime.toString("dd-MM-YYYY hh:mm:ss a");

// Example output: 25-09-2025 11:11:11 AM

Handling time zone conversions  

In today's globalized world, your customers may be spread across different time zones, and to add to the complexity, large countries like the USA or Russia have multiple time zones even within their own borders. This can easily lead to head scratching scenarios when working with time-based data. Fortunately, Deluge has got your back here too.

The trick is to first convert the date-time string into a unixEpoch timestamp and then use toDateTimeString() to display it in the target time zone.

Converting your account's time to a user's time zone 

The zoho.currenttime variable returns the time based on the setting you've chosen. Let's assume that your account is set for IST (Indian Standard Time) and you want to display it for a user in Los Angeles. Here's how to do it:

// zoho.currenttime returns an IST time

datetimeString = "21-Aug-2025 15:50:13";

 

// Convert the string to a Unix timestamp

unixValue = datetimeString.unixEpoch();  

// Convert the Unix timestamp to a datetime string in the target timezone

info toDateTimeString(unixValue, "dd-MMM-yyyy hh:mm:ss", "America/Los_Angeles");

// Output: 21-Aug-2025 03:20:13

 

 

Converting between two specific time zones 

What's more, the same approach can also be applied to convert between two time zones. You can specify the source time zone during the Unix conversion to do this. This is particularly useful when your input string is from a known time zone that isn't your server's default.

 

The below script demonstrates time conversion from IST to Sydney time:

// Specify the source timezone (IST) when converting to Unix epoch

unixValue = "25-Aug-2025 14:28:53".unixEpoch("IST");

 

// Convert to the target timezone (Australia/Sydney)

info toDateTimeString(unixValue,"dd-MMM-yyyy HH:mm:ss","Australia/Sydney");

// Output: 25-Aug-2025 18:58:53

 

You can learn more about toTime and toDateTimeString functions at these help links.

 

We hope these tips help you handle date and time operations in your Deluge scripts more effectively—they can be used across all Zoho services that support Deluge.

 

Deluge is a vast and powerful language and we aim to help you master it to make your life easier. We'll be back with more tips and tricks soon, so stay tuned!

 

And if you have any questions or other cool tricks, please share them below!

 

Until next time,

The Deluge Team
    • Recent Topics

    • DUNS & Bradstreet and Credit risk monitoring integration with Zoho books

      Small businesses not being paid by bigger clients and clients of all sizes is a huge problem. It will be nice if Zoho develops integration with DUNS & Bradstreet(D&B) and Credit risk monitoring integration with Zoho books. That have small businesses can
    • Zoho Forms - Form Rules based on attachment fields

      Many businesses use forms to collect documents and images from customers. In many cases, you may want to trigger a notification or other automation based on whether or not an attachment was added. I've noticed that attachment fields do not appear in Rules
    • Add multiple users to a task

      When I´m assigning a task it is almost always related to more than one person. Practical situation: When a client request some improvement the related department opens the task with the situation and people related to it as the client itself, the salesman
    • Can't open draft email for editing

      Last night I started composing an email and I let it save in drafts. This morning I want to continue working on the email. It is in my Drafts folder but it will not open. The only option there is to delete it. This is not the first time it has happened. On previous occasions I have just deleted the draft and started afresh, but I really want this one back. Windows 10 with Pale Moon 28.10.0 browser.
    • Open filtered deals from campaign

      Do you think a feature like this would be feasible? Say you are seeing campaign "XYZ" in CRM. The campaign has a related list of deals. If you want to see the related deals in a deal view, you should navigate to the Deals module, open the campaign filter,
    • Change scheduling emails time

      When sending an individual email there is a great feature to schedule them to send later. I could only use the one time that is suggested. Is there a way to select another time? Regards, Glenn
    • Zoho CRM: how can I control which contacts to sync with Outlook?

      I was just playing around syncing contacts from Zoho to MS Outlook (MS365 account.) The problem is our firm has hundreds of thousands of contacts and I don't want to bury my contacts list in outlook. Any help with this is greatly appreciated.
    • How to overcome limitations in meetings

      As a company, one of our deliverables is a meeting between two other companies, where we act as facilitators. So, if we recorded this meeting  in Zoho CRM, it should be connected to 2 accounts, 2 contacts, and 1 campaign (a campaign, in our use, is the
    • Different MRP / Pricing for same product but different batches

      We often face the following situations where MRP of a particular product changes on every purchase and hence we have to charge the customer accordingly. This can't be solved by Batch tracking as of now so far as I understand Zoho. How do you manage it as of now? 
    • Add a 'Log a Call' link to three dot icon in Canvas

      Hi, There's a three dot element when creating a canvas called 'More'. I would like to modify this to add a link that says 'Log a Call' in order to quickly record the details of a cellphone call. I'd also like this to be a simple 'contact' selection and
    • Syncing Zoho Forms with Bigin - Embedding issue?

      Hello everyone, I created a Zoho Form for a page on my GoDaddy website to collect leads, which then transfers the data to Bigin. However, I'm facing an issue where it doesn't seem to work properly. I've integrated Zoho Forms with Bigin and tried embedding
    • Can not add fields to a Section

      I feel like I'm missing something obvious: I can add new Sections to my form but I can not add fields to the Sections. I've tried fields already on the form as well as dragging and dropping new fields into the Section but nothing will go into it. What
    • Record Logged in User while using CRM lookup field

      Is it possible, while using the Zoho CRM lookup field, to automatically use the user account logged into Zoho CRM in a hidden field? I was hoping to add employee accounts to my current plan. But would like a record on the Form submission of who submitted
    • Form Rules for Suburb Categories to alternate landing pages or Making a Fields Contents ALL CAPS

      I need to send differentform submissions to two to three different thank-you URLs (for Meta/Google pixels) depending on which suburb a user selects in a form. I have ~400 suburbs split into two categories (A and B, based on business value). Current challenges:
    • Collaps Notes

      There are times when long/large notes are added to a record i.e. Accounts or Deals etc. Currently, the full note is displayed in the notes related list section. It would be great if by default only 5 to 10 rows of the note are displayed when the note
    • Zoho Down

      I have a drop in my Zoho One services.
    • Runing RPA Agents on Headless Windows 11 Machines

      Has anyone tried this? Anything to be aware of regarding screen resolution?
    • Problem for EU users connecting Zoho CRM through Google Ads for Enhanced conversions

      Has anyone else experienced this problem when trying to connect Zoho CRM through Google Ads interface to setup enhanced conversions? Did you guys get it fixed somehow? The Problem: The current Google Ads integration is hardcoded to use Zoho's US authentication
    • Why am I getting event Pop-up Notification for events that have been cancelled?

      Why is Calendar Notification still popping up for events that have been cancelled or changed? Each time events are cancelled or changed, I have observed that I am still getting notifications for them. Below is a sample pop-up notification for one of the
    • Whatsapp Limitation Questions

      Good day, I would like to find out about the functionality or possibility of all the below points within the Zoho/WhatsApp integration. Will WhatsApp buttons ever be possible in the future? Will WhatsApp Re-directs to different users be possible based
    • Create a draft in reply to an email via Emails API

      Hi, I’d like to use the outgoing webhook to automatically create a draft reply to incoming mail. How can I use the Emails API to create a draft reply that is linked to an existing email thread? I couldn’t find the relevant method in the documentation.
    • India Tech Support

      Is there no phone tech support number for India? And no chat facility either?
    • Billing Management: #1 Billing a Universal Business Routine

      Hello, As the saying goes, "Do the hardest job first." We started with the complex subject of finance and revenue management, which is considered the backbone of any business. Now, let's shift our focus and take a deep dive into this Billing Management,
    • Show/ hide specific field based on user

      Can someone please help me with a client script to achieve the following? I've already tried a couple of different scripts I've found on here (updating to match my details etc...) but none of them seem to work. No errors flagged in the codes, it just
    • What is a a valid JavaScript Domain URI when creating a client-based application using the Zoho API console?

      No idea what this is. Can't see what it is explained anywhere.
    • 5名限定 課題解決型ワークショップイベント Zoho ワークアウト開催のお知らせ (9/25)

      ユーザーの皆さま、こんにちは。Zoho ユーザーコミュニティチームの藤澤です。 9月開催のZoho ワークアウトについてお知らせします。 今回はZoomにて、オンライン開催します。 諸事情につき、今月の開催回は中止となりました。 次回は10/31(金)14時からの開催を予定しています。 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Zoho ワークアウトとは? Zoho ユーザー同士で交流しながら、サービスに関する疑問や不明点の解消を目的とした「Zoho ワークアウト」を開催します。 Zoho
    • Zoho Calendar not syncing correctly with personal Google Calendar

      Coming to this forum as Zoho Calendar support team is not responding, any more. For the past 8 weeks, I have been having an issue with Zoho Calendar not syncing with my personal Google Calendar correctly. I subscribed to Zoho Calendar iCal in my personal
    • Customer Parent Account or Sub-Customer Account

      Some of clients as they have 50 to 300 branches, they required separate account statement with outlet name and number; which means we have to open new account for each branch individually. However, the main issue is that, when they make a payment, they
    • need a packing list feature

      In our business, goods listed on an invoice are packed in separate boxes and shipped off. for e.g. an invoice may have 10 items. each item could then be packed in different boxes depending on qty of each item. this packing list is as important as the invoice for purposes of shipping documents.  Request you to add this feature asap.
    • Workdrive 5.0 / API Documentation Workflows

      Hi Zoho, When will the API documentation of the workflows be published? We are interested in using it to trigger manual workflows from an external application. Greetings, Justin
    • How to keep track of bags, cans, drums of inventory?

      We buy and sell products that are packaged in bags 🛍️, cans🥫, drums🛢️, etc. with batch numbers. When we get a shipment of one of the products, how do we track we received (say) 10 cans each of 5L of a product and maybe we received 10 cans of another
    • Zoho Error: This Operation has been restricted. Please contact support-as@zohocorp.com for further details

      Hello There, l tried to verify my domain (florindagoreti.com.br) and its shows this error: This Operation has been restricted. Please contact support-as@zohocorp.com for further details. Screenshot Given Below -  please check what went wrong. Thanks
    • How many ZOHO-Sites does the ZOHO-One Suite allow for?

      The free version of ZOHO-Sites allows for two sites, but it seems that the professional version (which is included in the ZOHO-One Suite) only allows for two websites. Is that correct? How many sites can I have within one ZOHO-One account?
    • Webhook from Zobot to Zoho Flow fails

      I'm trying to connect from zobot to zoho flow. When testing in zflow, I am receiving all entered data from the connector correctly. The SalesIQ connector's "outputreaction" is {} (is this normal or is there a problem?). But as soon as I try my chat bot
    • Transition from Sole Proprietorship to GmbH (Limited Liability Company) – Best Approach in Zoho Books / Zoho One

      Hello everyone, I am currently operating under a Zoho One plan with a sole proprietorship in Switzerland. As of January 1st, 2026, I will be incorporating a new legal entity – a GmbH (Swiss equivalent of a Limited Liability Company). While the business
    • Best way to display complex Bookings Consultation Descriptions on Zoho Site?

      I am a new user so apologies if this has been asked before. I couldn't find any answers in the forum. We offer 18 complex Consultations to our subscribers. Our current platform lets me put detail on these Consultations thoroughly (200-300 words) during
    • DKIM cannot be enabled for the domain as no verified default selector present

      Hi Support Team, For Domain DKIM record trying to enable status. but showing error "DKIM cannot be enabled for the domain as no verified default selector present" So, please resolve the issue. Thank you.
    • Issue Connecting My Domain to Zoho Sites Despite Purchasing It from Zoho

      Hello, I am facing an issue connecting my domain to my website on Zoho Sites. Details of the issue: I purchased the domain directly from Zoho. I am already using the same domain successfully with Zoho Mail. However, when I try to assign this domain to
    • Insert auto number from main form into subform rows

      Hello. I'm trying to take from my main form "order number" which i have setup as an auto generated number into every line created in my subform. So when a row is created in my subform i want the "order number " from the main form to be inserted automatically.
    • Dark Mode - Font Colors Don't Work

      When editing a document in Dark Mode and selecting font colors, they don't show up on screen.  Viewing/editing the same document in Light Mode shows them just fine.
    • Next Page