Dashboard / Tile Timezone Defaults

Looker Q&A Looker
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Current Looker version: 22.6.43

Application Time Zone: UTC

User Specific Time Zones: Enabled

Database: Microsoft SQL Server 2017+

Database Time Zone: UTC

A few questions relating to Looker time zones. When creating a dashboard, each new tile defaults to UTC timezone. I understand this relates to the Application Time Zone setting. I can change each tile’s TZ by clicking that dropdown, but is there any way to default this from UTC to Viewer Time Zone without having to select that for each new tile?

I see there is a setting at the top of dashboards to have the timezone set as “Viewer time zone”, which will update dashboard tile visualizations to the user’s TZ. Is there a way to have this option be the default instead of “Each tile’s timezone”?

As an aside, for new dashboard tile creations, I also see an empty line initially selected in the UI for that dashboard time zone. It shows UTC prior to clicking, but when I select it, a blank line appears at the top and is selected. This line disappears after I select a time zone and go back into the dropdown to select another timezone.

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Doing some research and I think this link may answer the first few questions I had: https://help.looker.com/hc/en-us/articles/4420200309267-How-do-I-make-my-dashboard-timezone-listen-to-the-timezone-defined-in-my-embed-URL-Community-

The last question still remains, though.

1 Like
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Wow, this is surprising. Thanks for pointing this out.

We ran into this issue and can’t believe this has been how we’ve had our dashboards set for years. Most of users were in 1 time zone, so we never noticed until someone in a different time zone pointed this out.

This is odd functionality. The default behavior should always be the viewer’s timezone unless explicitly set otherwise.