Incoming Date Normalization

Marketing Cloud Engagement normalizes the date and time formats represented in a SOAP message. All of the times listed in this table refer to the same time.

Format	Example	Description
`yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ddZ`	2025-08-21T18:32:15Z	UTC format
`yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:dd`	2025-08-21T14:32:15	Server time
`yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:dd-zz:zz`	2025-08-21T12:02:15-06:30	Time offset from UTC

Methods and Parameters Affected by Normalization

Time normalization applies to these methods and parameters.

Create: Options and Objects
Retrieve: RetrieveRequest
Update: Options and Objects
Delete: Options and Objects
Query: QueryRequest
Execute: Requests
Extract: Requests
Perform: Options and Definitions
Configure: Options and Configurations
Schedule: Options, Schedule, and Interactions

The API searches for properties with a type of DateTime in any objects passed in through these parameters. The API then normalizes any time formats found, and this normalization applies recursively to any nested objects.

Any response including the incoming request object presents a different time in that response. For example, the CreateResult object on a Create call contains the object from the request and presents any dates in the returned object in server time.