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Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
Not applicable
2 years ago
Solved

Show Date/time based on user's time zone

Hi all, I have a date column and I want to show it dynamically based on the user's time zone.   I changed the format of the column to date/time/timezone and I thought Power Bi would handl...
Need Help
  • danextian's avatar
    danextian
    2 years ago

    Hi Anonymous 

    While M has built-in functions to handle timezones, none of them automatically shifts to the user's. The service uses Utc while Desktop is the user's. M will not know what timezone those datetimes are in so any datetime column converted to datetimezone will be +0 if refreshed in the service. You can convert a datetime column to datetimezone with an offset value (like 10.5 for GMT+10:30) using DateTimeZone.AddZone but knowing what timezone to add is key. Either way, you get to select and load only a specific timezone - Utc or user-defined.

Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
Not applicable
2 years ago

Hi DAN,
Thank you for your solution, but I faced another issue.
I can't use measures for graph visuals, for example, the X-axis of a line chart.
Is there any way to update the time zone based on user selection in graphs alongside tables?

danextian's avatar
danextian
Icon for Super User rankSuper User
2 years ago

Hi Anonymous 

Your other workaround is to crossjoin all timezones with the distinct values of your datetime columns, create a many to many relationship between the original datetime column and the crossjoined one and use the timezone from the crossjoined table in the slicer.

 

Crossjoined Table =
VAR Timezones =
    SELECTCOLUMNS ( GENERATESERIES ( -23.5, 23.5, 0.5 ), "TimeZone", [Value] )
VAR DistinctDateTimes =
    DISTINCT ( 'fact table'[datetime] )
RETURN
    CROSSJOIN ( Timezones, DistinctDateTimes )

 

Be aware while this is possible, this might negatively impact the performance of your model.

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    Not applicable
    2 years ago

    Hi danextian,
    Thanks for your help and solutions.
    I tried creating a cross-join column but got a "token Eof expected." error.



    Could you help me with that?

    • danextian's avatar
      danextian
      Icon for Super User rankSuper User
      2 years ago

      It is to be done in DAX as calculated table.

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    Not applicable
    2 years ago

    Hi danextian,
    Sorry for asking lots of questions, but I'm a little confused.
    I couldn't set a many to many relationship here and also I don't know how to connect the time zone column with our crossjoined table.
    In the demo file you sent me, I added a new graph to show the switched time zones.
    Could you please help me with how I should do this?

    I couldn't upload a pbix file here so here's the link to transferxl.

    • danextian's avatar
      danextian
      Icon for Super User rankSuper User
      2 years ago

      There's something I miss in the formula. I forgot to add the datetime based on the selected timezone. Should have been:

       

      Crossjoined Table =
VAR Timezones =
    SELECTCOLUMNS ( GENERATESERIES ( -23.5, 23.5, 0.5 ), "TimeZone", [Value] )
VAR DistinctDateTimes =
    DISTINCT ( 'fact table'[datetime] )
RETURN
    ADDCOLUMNS (
        CROSSJOIN ( Timezones, DistinctDateTimes ),
        "Switched DateTime", [DateTime] + DIVIDE ( [TimeZone], 24 )
    )

       

       

       

       

      Please see attached sample pbix