How to Convert Timezones and Display Selected Timezone in Dashboard

This article helps users customize dashboards to show date and time in their preferred time zone.

Use Cases

Company with clients in different countries can let users view data in their local time, like EST for users in the U.S. or IST for users in India, instead of the default time zone. This makes the data more relevant and improves the user experience by showing it in a way that’s familiar to each user’s location. The article uses a PostgreSQL data source, where UTC is the default time zone.

Steps to Convert the Timezones And Display Selected Timezone in Dashboard

1. Create the Dashboard Parameter for Timezone

• Start by creating a dashboard parameter named Timezone. This parameter will enable users to select the desired timezone. Please refer to the image below
  
  

2. Update the Dashboard parameter in Query

• Navigate to the data source designer page and switch to code mode. Use the dashboard parameter in your query as shown below:
  
  
  
  In this query:
  • dob is a date column.
  • @{{:TimeZone}} is the dashboard parameter name.
  • The query checks the following conditions:
    • If the timezone is ‘UTC’, it returns dob as is, since the default timezone is UTC.
    • If the timezone is ‘EST’, it converts dob from UTC to Eastern Standard Time (EST).
    • If the timezone is ‘IST’, it converts dob from UTC to Indian Standard Time (IST).
      The result is stored in the alias TimezoneBasedDate.

3. Run and Save the Code

• After modifying the code, run it to ensure there are no errors and then save your changes.

4. Select the Desired Timezone in Preview Mode

• Navigate to preview mode where you will see the dashboard parameter icon. Here, you can select your desired timezone
  
  
• Additionally, you can assign the dashboard parameter column to a combo box to select the time zones.
  
  

5. Output

Additional References

• How to create and use the dashboard parameter
• How to use Browser timezone feature in Bold BI