inserting date into email template

[vikram-mit]

i have email template for our lead follow up emails where we usually suggest a date 2 business days of sending the email. currently, it is a pain to manually update the date every time we send email. is there a way to insert it dynamically the way we can do the personalization attributes?

[GMcDaniel7]

Hey what is the code for today's date?

I'm building a workflow that creates a daily task. To differentiate between days, I want it to be Task Title [Today's Date]. Therefore I just need the code for today's date. Can you please share?

[alyssamwilie]

Since this thread still gets activity just wanted to note that datetimeformat() has been deprecated and replaced with format_datetime, format_date, and format_time. I just released a blog post that talks about dynamic dates in detail with many exmaples of these new functions if you want to learn more : https://www.alyssawilie.com/blog/add-dynamic-dates-to-automated-emails

[TPühringer]

Hello Alyssa,

i am not able to access your website.

is it permant offline?

Is the code working for one-to-one emails also?

Regards

[LoraBergeron]

Thank you, thank you!!  Works perfectly!

[alyssamwilie · Accepted solution]

@LoraBergeron 

You can use the plus_time filter to get a future date from the current date, like so:

{% set future_date = local_dt|plus_time(21, 'days')%}
{{ datetimeformat(future_date, '%B %e, %Y') }}

[alexpeck_akimbo]

Thank you! You helped us so much. 🙏🏼

[Rob_Gordon]

Thanks for this. I've read the blog post also. 

I can't see where to add thi sinto an email template though? (https://app.hubspot.com/templates) If I paste it into the template it flags an error.

I want to be able to manually send an email to a client, select a template, and that template auto drop in todays date into it?

[SMcInnes3]

Hi, I'm using this to insert a dynamic date into an email and it works great! I was wondering if it's possible to have the date appear inline with preceeding text? I'd like to have a line that reads, "Sale ends ________" but currently it will put the dynamically generated date onto the next line which looks odd.

Thanks,
Scott

[alyssamwilie]

You can put any extra text directly in the formatting string of the datetimeformat.

{{ datetimeformat(local_dt, 'Sale Ends %A, %B %e, %Y') }}

[SMcInnes3]

Thanks for the quick response. Would you mind showing me an example? I did try that but I must have done something wrong because it didn’t work. Thank you!

[alyssamwilie]

@SMcInnes3 
Screenshot in the editor:

And how it shows in the actual email:

If you're putting this in a section with columned content you'll want to make sure the column it's in is wide enough to accomodate the amount of text.

[SMcInnes3]

Sorry, this is my first time trying something like this and I'm still doing something wrong. This is what I'm currently using but it splits it over 2 lines.

 Sale Ends {% set future_date = local_dt|plus_time(10, 'days')%}
{{ datetimeformat(future_date, '%B %e, %Y') }} at Midnight

Would like it all to appear on one line. Thanks again for being so helpful

[alyssamwilie]

Do this:

{% set future_date = local_dt|plus_time(10, 'days')%}
{{ datetimeformat(future_date, 'Sale Ends %B %e, %Y at Midnight') }}

[SMcInnes3]

Amazing! Thank you very much!

[YHandler]

hi there! 

how do we implement this ?

best,

jona

[spogue]

@alyssamwilie This is really great, thanks for the solution. I'm curious to how this would work if I only wanted to show the next 4 business days? If its showing today (a Thursday), it would show Friday, Monday, and Tuesday. Is that possible through Hubl?  

[alyssamwilie]

@spogue Not sure if you can get them concurrently but you can use multiple plus_time calls to get the next three days and %A in the format to get the weekday.

{{ datetimeformat(local_dt|plus_time(1, 'days'), "%A") }}
{{ datetimeformat(local_dt|plus_time(2, 'days'), "%A") }}
{{ datetimeformat(local_dt|plus_time(3 , 'days'), "%A") }}

[ShiranA]

Thank you! This was very helpful!

[spogue]

@alyssamwilie Makes sense. Have you ever seen code to only show business days?

For example, if I took the way you just wrote the code, but I only wanted to show the next 3 business days, is there a way to "skip" weekdays if one of those days is a Saturday or Sunday? Like this:

Friday, September 24, 2021

Monday, September 27, 2021

Tuesday, September 28, 2021

Thanks again for the help.

[alyssamwilie]

@spogue  You can use a for loop and if statements to increase the plus_time if the weekday lands on a Saturday or Sunday. You'll probably want to put this in a custom module instead of directly in the email though.

{% for day in [1, 2, 3] %}
  {% if datetimeformat(local_dt|plus_time(day,'days'), '%A') == "Saturday" %}
    {{ datetimeformat(local_dt|plus_time(day + 2,'days'), '%A, %B %e, %Y') }}<br>
  {% elif datetimeformat(local_dt|plus_time(day,'days'), '%A') == "Sunday" %}
    {{ datetimeformat(local_dt|plus_time(day + 1,'days'), '%A, %B %e, %Y') }}<br>
  {% else %}
    {{ datetimeformat(local_dt|plus_time(day,'days'), '%A, %B %e, %Y') }}<br>
  {% endif %}
{% endfor %}