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Handle local time zone in Power BI service

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Curtis Ramirez on 03 Nov 2017 21:14:52

As of now, the reports that I create on desktop utilize a lot of time intelligence functions and relative date filters. This is completely fine so long as I view the report on the desktop. Once I publish the report up to the service and then utilize those visuals in dashboards I run into this issue. All of my time intelligence functions (TODAY & NOW) and relative date filters convert to UTC.

This issue causes my data to roll over to the next day 5 hours early which affects all of my subscriptions.

It would be absolutely fantastic if Power BI service could recognize local time zone or even if we could manually set our time zone so that these measure work correctly.

Comments (69)
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Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 23:41:12

RE: Handle local time zone in Power BI service

Time is fundamental.

The ability to specify time zone settings by report is critical for everyone in the world except London.

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Yesenia Soriano on 05 Jul 2020 23:41:05

RE: Handle local time zone in Power BI service

Yes please can we get this fixed. I have many reports that go blank at 4pm pacific time!

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Power BI Ideas Admin on 05 Jul 2020 23:40:38

RE: Handle local time zone in Power BI service

This is also a real issue for our company and can only be resolved by Microsoft. The only solutions/workarounds that are possible will either avoid using relative dates all together or a formula that will only fix the issue for a particular relative time frame.

The main problem is that an individual only know to do this once they have been burned. There is almost no way to know intuitively beforehand. The current implementation is deceptive as the intended behavior changes as you publish it to the service. There are many ways that this can be resolved or made more explicit. Microsoft needs to implement one of them ASAP.

Be sure to raise an issue through your support contract. This should be treated as a bug and not a feature request.

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Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 23:36:05

RE: Handle local time zone in Power BI service

Any update on this?

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David Cornwell on 05 Jul 2020 23:32:02

RE: Handle local time zone in Power BI service

My recollection (and the way that this idea has been described) is that it used to only be an issue in the Power BI Service. However, I now have the same problem with the relative date filters on PowerBI Desktop which also use UTC. Realy hoping for some development focus on this soon.

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Susana on 05 Jul 2020 23:29:14

RE: Handle local time zone in Power BI service

I think that Power BI should have a function to get the time zone of the current user who is using the Power BI service.

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David Cornwell on 05 Jul 2020 23:25:54

RE: Handle local time zone in Power BI service

Wow....shocked that this is an issue. PowerBI really needs to get this sorted.

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Kevin H on 05 Jul 2020 23:24:57

RE: Handle local time zone in Power BI service

Yep, I wish I could do at least one of the following...

1. Take my date/time values stored in the data model (e.g. in UTC), and create a DAX measures to return the date/time in the Power BI Service user's local time zone. (And, another DAX measure to say what the user's local time zone is.)

2. Store date/time/timezone values in the data model ... and, have a way for the Power BI Service to convert those values, in reports, to the user's local time zone.

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Philippe Allard on 05 Jul 2020 23:21:17

RE: Handle local time zone in Power BI service

yes ! We need this badly.

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john on 05 Jul 2020 23:20:34

RE: Handle local time zone in Power BI service

Please release this fix