Days, Hours or Minutes Between Two Dates (or Now) – Custom Variable Template

The Custom Variable Template to get the amount of full days, hours, etc. between the first and the second date or Date.now().

Links

• GitHub repo
• Community Template Gallery
• Blog post with usage example

Description

The variable template can help you to build triggers in which you need to compare a date of a previous event with the current date. The date of previous event should be in Unix Time, result of Date.now().

Set Up

• Go to Templates Page;
• Click Search Gallery in Variable Templates section;
• Type Days, Hours or Minutes Between Two Dates. In the list of templates click on the template;
• Click Add to workspace button;
• Go to Variables page;
• Click Add button, select the template from the list;
• Set variable name;
• Set value for First Date field. Usually it’s GTM variable contains Unix Time. For example it can be a 1st Party Cookie GTM Variable with the name cookie.previous_event_time. Put the name of the variable like this {{cookie.previous_event_time}};
• If you need to compare with the current time set the Compare to to Now. If you need to compare with a second date, select Other date and put the date or GTM Variable with the date in Second date field;
• Set the Time Unit, by default it sets to Days. But if you need to compare dates in hours, minutes or seconds – please change Time Unit filed;
• Click Save button;
• Now you can use the new variable in triggers and compare the value using greater than or less than operators with a needed amount of days (or other time units based on your setup).

Use Cases

• Create trigger on login event but X days after registrations
• Create trigger on purchase event in the same day as previous purchase
• Create trigger on purchase event but not less than X days after visiting blog