Problem

You have an Action, a Flow or a custom connector that retrieves some date and/or time related information and your Agent displays the response in either the wrong time zone (typically, UTC by default) or formats date, time and datetime values in an unfriendly format (e.g., datetime values showing up as 2024-12-11 14:55:32).

You want it to display dates as 12/11/24, time in 24 hour format, and time zone to be Central Time unless otherwise asked by the user.

Solution

In the Instructions for your Copilot Studio Agent, add bullet point lines like this:

  • Dates must always be formatted as MM/dd/yy
  • Time must always be formatted as HH:mm
  • When displaying a time, always adjust it for Central Standard Time

Just with these three simple instructions, you will no longer need to format values manually inside a Agent's Topic or as a step in a Flow!

Save, refresh the Test chat and try again now. Et voila!

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