Almost all the dashboards I built are used by the stakeholders daily. I got this new request from them a few weeks back. They wanted to know when the dashboard was last updated.
That is easy, Right?
We have a built in feature for that in Tableau. (Check this article)
But there is a catch. The dashboards are used by stakeholders in different countries and they want to see the last updated time in their timezone.
But changing the timezone is not possible using the built in feature.
After brainstorming, I came up with this workaround.
This method only works if you are using a relational database or Excel/Google sheets as a data source.
SQL: (I am using BigQuery for this)
Step 1: Use the following query as a Custom SQL in Tableau. This will return the current time.
SELECT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP() `updated_at`
Step 2: Note down your database server’s timezone. In my case, it is UTC.
Create a calculated field “Timezone (IST)”
To convert UTC to IST we have to add 330 minutes.
Step 3: Add the calculated field to a sheet. Do some formatting magic and add it to the dashboard. Voila!
Google Sheets: (Works with Excel too)
=NOW() function returns the current time based on your system time.
Connect this sheet to Tableau and follow steps 2 and 3 from above.
Whenever the dashboard refreshes, The system time at the time of refresh will be updated. Using this method, we can know the dashboard’s last updated time in our preferred time zones.
Let me know if you found this useful.
I come across a lot of challenging requests from my stakeholders and this is one of them. I wanted to share my learnings with fellow Tableau wizards :)
Sorry for any grammatical mistakes. This is my first time writing an article. Also, Let me know if this method is already covered elsewhere.
