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.
38 Comments
- When we use Event Hub, IoT Hub or the system datetime in Stream Analytics the timezone considered is the UTC. It would be interesting to be able to see data represented in the user timezone in PowerBI.
- Since we will be deploying reports and dashboards for a global audience, this functionality is absolutely critical--and basic. We simply cannot tell our users to look at time series data and to "do the math" in their heads for their timezone.
- We need a way to display data in our local timezone accounting for daylight savings time. The data source stores the dates in UTC but we need reports to show local time. A native and easy way to do this in PowerBI would be a huge help. There are many blog posts and help articles floating around with solutions people have attempted but it's a simple issue that so many users would benefit from having solved centrally by PowerBI itself. Please consider!
- Certainly would save a lot of time. Previously I had to actually lookup the DST times for the target timezone for the next 5 years, then come up with a hard coded m query to convert. After 5 years, it won't be displaying data properly and i'm sure i'll be somewhere else.
- Agree this is needed. Spent hours trying to decipher why date/time of 1st October 2017 12:00:00 converts itself to 30th September 2017 11:00:00 in reports and hence reports data under the wrong month. (Sydney - AEST - changes to daylight saving at 2am on the 1st October 2017)
- Yes, this would be great. I have data coming in as UTC and I want to easily convert it to my local time zone.
- Yes Please consider this as a critical priority.
- Yes, this is very needed! Thank you!
- Would like to feel more confident with a native solution rather than having to apply custom functions in M
- There are workarounds when viewing In Power BI Desktop: https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2017/03/28/daylight-saving-time-and-time-zones-in-m/ But this does not work when report is published to Power BI service. We have not found any techniques which work when published to service however - apart from explicitly handling DST and converting to a specific time zone. For us - this is a major hindrance.
