Skip to main content

Power BI

Needs Votes

Relative Date Slicers and Filters - Add an Option to Choose Effective Time Zone

Vote (31) Share
Reed Jones's profile image

Reed Jones on 13 Mar 2019 09:13:23

This page https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/visuals/desktop-slicer-filter-date-range explains these limitations:

The slicer and filter are always based on the time in UTC, so if you configure a filter in a report and send it to a colleague in a different time zone, you'll both see the same data. However, if you aren't in the UTC time zone, you might see data for a different time offset than you expect.

However, I would be preferable if there was a setting to choose which time zone should be the effective time zone.

This is particularly important when using the Relative Date Filters to show what happened "yesterday."

Example: At 8PM Eastern Daylight Time, any visuals or pages that use a relative filter to show data for the previous day (i.e. yesterday), will suddenly show no data because the filters are based on the UTC time zone - so Power BI thinks the day has changed to the next day. Therefore, for the next several hours, these reports show no data. For anyone living in time zones further away from UTC, it's a bigger and bigger issue as it is earlier in the evening/day when the visuals will show no data.

The issue is compounded in that my source of data is not refreshed until 3-4AM, so for people in the Pacific Time Zone, they start seeing no data in the visuals at 5PM PDT. For those in Australia, they will never see "yesterday's" data.

The report designer should be given method to set the display time zone and/or the report consumer should be given an option to do the same.

Thanks!

Comments (2)
Reed Jones's profile image Profile Picture

FELIPE ABBADIA ASSIS on 06 Jul 2020 00:04:46

RE: Relative Date Slicers and Filters - Add an Option to Choose Effective Time Zone

Hi,

I'm from Brazil.

I face the same problem. Reports that I use relative date filter for yesterday are blank from 9PM Brazil. Because of the UTC time used as a default by POWERBI.


Have you been able to resolve / resolve this issue in any way?

Reed Jones's profile image Profile Picture

Kendall Lister on 06 Jul 2020 00:01:20

RE: Relative Date Slicers and Filters - Add an Option to Choose Effective Time Zone

As someone in Australia, it's very confusing to explain to our users why "this - day" shows yesterday's data until 11 am when it switches to today's data, so respecting the user's (or even just the Power BI Report Server's) time zone is essential.