Christiaan B. on 29 Aug 2017 05:15:12
Typically date & time information is available in UTC (if not then put it to UTC at source), you just want it rendered in the users' locale/time zone at reporting time.
Adding an option to format datetimezone fields in the users' locale/time zone (based on the user account settings) would probably solve 90+% of requirements for rendering time zone information.
Currently MS does not provide for showing offset information (or local time zone) as you only have date/time format options, but in the query editor you can set type to datetimezone which show offset info so it's clearly available - just the rendering that lacks.
Not having this functionality is forcing people to resort to hacks like using DateTimeZone.AddZone () with hardcoded time offsets - not scalable where DST is involved. Current workarounds obviously only work as long as the viewer is in the designated time zone and does not scale across a global audience.
- Comments (38)
RE: Allow formatting datetimezone fields to user local timezone
This is something that pretty much exists everywhere apart from Power BI!
Just choosing which timezone is local is what we indeed need. Either choosing a report wide time zone, OR being able to specify in the DAX query which time zone I want this date to switch to. For example, from UTC datetime to UK datetime.
RE: Allow formatting datetimezone fields to user local timezone
Truly absurd that this is still an issue.
RE: Allow formatting datetimezone fields to user local timezone
Desperately need this. Reporting is unreliable without easy way to show in local time
RE: Allow formatting datetimezone fields to user local timezone
Currently threre is no option to show the data as per the user local timezone in power BI Service. if a country is having multiple timezones , can we implement something that we are using in D365 ( which will show the data according to the users local timezone). Or is there any idea already exists. i wiuld be helpful if we have a option to configure timezone in Power BI service.
Thanks.
RE: Allow formatting datetimezone fields to user local timezone
Come on product team - this is a basic necessity! Just need a formatting option on datetimeoffset fields that allow you to render it in local/alternative timezone.
RE: Allow formatting datetimezone fields to user local timezone
'So much needed, especially as not all countries flip to DST on the same date in the year.
E.g. we receive data from a server located in Seattle. So the timezone of the data is Pacific Standard Time (PST = GMT -8) until 10 Mar 2019. Then it switches to Pacific Daylight Time (PDT = GMT-7) until 3 Nov 2019, to then switch back to PST.
To make it worse, e.g. users in the UK switch to British Summer time (BST = GMT+1) on 31-Mar-2019 and flip back on 27-Oct-2019 (GMT+0). So most of the time we are 8 hours apart, but late March / early April and late October / early November it gets very tricky.
And if you think this is not complex enough, Europe is already discussing to permanently scrap DST in the EU soon. So even if you build your own query logic with hard coded dates when DST starts/stops by country, you can rework this logic again in every model when things change.
Thus offering a solution to 'select a timezone' will only work if combined with selecting whether 'DST is enabled or not' in that timezone. Also, when converting from one timezone to another, the DST flag must be available for both the source and the target value separately.
So I like the idea of Eric Thomas for a simple text string conversion, but would add another (optional) DST parameter.
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How about an option to SELECT THE TIMEZONE and DST ENABLES when converting a UTC Text Column to DATE-TIME?
- Right click column
- Select Date-Time
- Choose Timezone (i.e. for GMT-8 for Pacific Time, so always use the 'standard' time)
- Choose DST Enabled (True/False, this shall adjust GMT offset by -1/0/+1 based on current date)
- Click Apply
- Time is converted correctly!
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And to make it really generic, I suggest to add an optional DST parameter to all the DateTimeZone () functions. Or even add a new set of DateTimeZoneDST () to the M language with the extra DST flag. In fact there must be two DST flags added, one for DST source, and one for DST target, i.e. is DST enabled
RE: Allow formatting datetimezone fields to user local timezone
YES, PLEASE! How is it that power BI is not able to render results in the user's local time zone, given that nearly every we platform on earth stores data in UTC and presents it in the user's local time zone?
RE: Allow formatting datetimezone fields to user local timezone
'How about an option to SELECT THE TIMEZONE when converting a UTC Text Column to DATE-TIME?
- Right click column
- Select Date-Time
- Choose Timezone
- Click Apply
- Time is converted correctly!
RE: Allow formatting datetimezone fields to user local timezone
I am playing around with importing data from JSON files and am tangling with trying to convert JSON Date/Time to something that I can work with. This could be a lot easier couldn't time? TZ seems to be something that is always such a pain - can you help me not shoot myself in the foot.....repeatedly?
RE: Allow formatting datetimezone fields to user local timezone
Please fix this! Just spent quite a few hours trying to figure out why 30/09/2018 is showing as 29/09/2018 due to daylight savings change in New Zealand.