How to get Panels to pass a correct date to Views (D7, Views/Panels3)
After struggling for some time, I've still not found any way that works via context from Panels. Other people have said Panels values were determined by the "token" content display mode, but that isn't the case, at least with dates. Of course you can put the value in the URL and have Views grab it there, but for my use that wasn't appropriate. It also seems more fragile since it makes all content dependent on the path structure.

The best option I found was setting the "Argument Input" on the View to "Input on Pane Config". Then in the Panel Pane, use keyword/token substitution. I created a custom date &amp; time formatter that is CCYY-MM-DD, called "date only", and set the Panel option to "%node:field-my-date-field:value:date_only". That grabs just the first value from a date range. For a field without range, "%node:field-my-date-field:date_only" works.