Change timezone in Data studio

Question

I have a table with a date field UTC timezone but I want to change it into another timezone in data studio. I have created a new field in data studio with this formula: TODATE(update_date,"America/Chicago") but it didn't work correctly. Any ideas? I won't change the source table to add a new column (date convert).

Answer 1

I was looking for an answer to this for a long time and came across so many complex indirect approaches, till I was able to implement something which seems very easy and straight forward.

Basically, in the data source connection you set up the date selection field as:

DATE('your_timefield', @timezone)

In case if using date range parameter, it would be something like:

DATE('your_timefield', @timezone) BETWEEN PARSE_DATE('%Y%m%d', @DS_START_DATE) AND PARSE_DATE('%Y%m%d', @DS_END_DATE)

Next step, create a 'parameter' as below

TimeZone parameter

You can select any of the timezones as 'default'

Now within your report you can publish a drop down giving users option to switch between the timezones

timezone select Dropdown

works like a charm. Also, while using it for things like displaying time ( in trends or otherwise) use the same parameter in selecting date/time so the time field reflects the timezone as well. you can use the datetime function as below

DATETIME("your_timefield", @timezone) as your_timefield

Answer 2

Time Zone calculations can now be done in Google Data Studio using the recently introduced ( 17 Sep 2020 Update ) Date and Time functions.

0) Upgrade the Date Field

Ensure that the Date field has been upgraded to to the newer Date field type.

Added a GIF to elaborate:

1) America/Chicago

The Calculated Field below makes use of DATETIME_DIFF in conjunction with CURRENT_DATETIME to get the difference between the two Time Zones ( UTC and America/Chicago ), and then subtracts the difference in SECOND from the Date field (named Date in this Report):

PARSE_DATETIME(
    "%s",
    CAST(CAST(FORMAT_DATETIME("%s", Date)AS NUMBER) - DATETIME_DIFF(CURRENT_DATETIME("UTC"), CURRENT_DATETIME("America/Chicago"), SECOND)AS TEXT))

Google Data Studio Report and a GIF to elaborate:

Answer 3

If you can manipulate the data in BigQuery, DATE(update_date, "America/Chicago") should do the trick.