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Krishanu's avatar
Krishanu
Helper I
5 years ago
Solved

Datetimezone conversion behaves inconsistently

Hi,
I have text column in this format  - 2021-07-20T19:01:10.8986983Z
As you can see this is in UTC .  In Power BI desktop when I mark the datatype of this column as datetime, its converted into my local time. 
Now, When I publish this in service , this gets converted into UTC+3 (incidentally - my client is also in UTC+3) , this behavior is strange as Power BI service should be in UTC - This I have validated if I create a seprate column using  datetime.localnow()  and in desktop it shows my local time and in service it shows UTC.

Is the behavior of the text column in pbi service a bug or I am missing something here?
Thanks for your help.

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  • GilbertQ's avatar
    GilbertQ
    5 years ago

    Hi Krishanu 

     

    If your data is stored as text it will not change and keep what the value is stored as.


    If you use datetime.localnow/datetimezone.localnow it will always use UTC because this is the time of all the Power BI Servers.

3 Replies

  • GilbertQ's avatar
    GilbertQ
    Super User
    5 years ago

    Hi Krishanu 

     

    If you change it to a Text column, then use it will not change.


    Likewise if you are not using the DateTime.LocalNow() it will keep the datetime column in the required format.

    • Krishanu's avatar
      Krishanu
      Helper I
      5 years ago

      Thanks GilbertQ   for the response.
      1. But I didn't understand where from it's getting UTC+3 in pbi service?

      2. Is this a bug or this is by design - can I depend on this feature to get the datetime in client's timezone?
      3. If this is expected behavior , why datetime.localnow/datetimezone.localnow gives result in UTC?


      If you can reproduce this at your side - what could be the possible explanation?

      • GilbertQ's avatar
        GilbertQ
        Super User
        5 years ago

        Hi Krishanu 

         

        If your data is stored as text it will not change and keep what the value is stored as.


        If you use datetime.localnow/datetimezone.localnow it will always use UTC because this is the time of all the Power BI Servers.