Local time zone timestamps

Hi, Kristian.

The alignment parameter in synthetic time series lets you align to different time zones. 
https://docs.cognite.com/dev/concepts/resource_types/synthetic_timeseries/#alignment

• To align to UTC/GMT+0 (aligned to: Sep 09 2020 00:00:00 UTC)

  ts{externalId='houston.ro.REMOTE_AI[34]', alignment=1599609600000, aggregate='average', granularity='24h'}

• To align to UTC/GMT+3 (aligned to: Sep 09 2020 03:00:00 UTC)

  ts{externalId='houston.ro.REMOTE_AI[34]', alignment=1599620400000, aggregate='average', granularity='24h'}

As for the ability to set time zone for the visualization in Charts, that is a great idea. I have converted this thread to a product idea to gather interest across customers. 

Best regards, Knut

Thanks! I was also just made aware that Charts already by default displays data in local time, and even handles daylight savings time. It is probably how most of our users would want it, but being able to choose UTC or another timezone might also be useful.

Regarding the alignment parameter, it helps, but isn’t quite what I would be after, as it would require an aggregation of data, and I suppose daylight savings time would be an issue. 

Yes, then I understand you better.

Charts uses the local timezone settings on your computer, so it will handle what you are looking for. Very happy to hear that this is what most of your users need. 

Knut

We need this!

We have vessels, operators, and engineers spread across 3 continents. We use Charts (and still Insight) for trouble-shooting across the continents. Typically an engineer located in Norway works with the crew on one of our vessels in Antarctica or with personnel in our factory in Houston. Now we spend time on manually keeping track of the time zones (and daylight savings which happens at different dates in Houston/Norway and not in Antarctica) to make sure we look and the same data. With UTC (which we already operate after) 
Please add this to Charts. I understand that this is not a problem for most users but this is something we asked for the first time ~3 years ago.

Hello, @Stig Grafsrønningen 

Thank you for the request and the description of how you are working today. I understand that it is time consuming to manually keep track of the time zones and daylight savings, and vessels in different time zones.

Please use the “upvote” functionality at the top of this thread, as we gauge the needs across features and users across customers.

All the best, Knut J. Vidvei

Hi,

I am happy to announce that in the June 5th release for CDF, we introduced support for Time Zones and Monthly Aggregates for the Time Series API.

This feature allows API users to specify a named time zone (according to those zones defined in the IANA database) in which to retrieve aggregated data.  When a time zone is specified, the API applies the appropriate offset to the aggregated values of the data points in order to return the correct selection of data.  The feature works for all named time zones, including those with a 15 minute offset such as Nepal.

The feature also allows API users to explicitly specify the time offset, in 15 minute increments, if required.

In conjunction with time zone support, we have also introduced support for monthly aggregate granularity.  This feature adds a new ‘month’ time granularity parameter option in addition to second, minute, hour and day. Users can specify an aggregate bucket size from 1 month to a theoretical maximum of 100,000 months.  When retrieving aggregated data, the API will automatically return aggregated values for the month(s) contained within the query, and will automatically account for the number of days in the month, including leap years, and including daylight savings time adjustments.  Support in the Python SDK and Grafana Connector will follow very soon.

We plan to introduce functionality to select your preferred time zone in which to display your data to relevant applications and user interfaces in future releases.  

Kind Regards, Glen
 

Looking forward for this. The Cognite Charts application is one of the best our theres, but this lack of feature currently hinders the options for a central team to support other regional teams in an effective why of “looking at data the same way they do”. Eg., conversations talk about troubles at 14h local time, but I open the chart and see it in my local time, so constantly need to convert back and fourth before continuing the conversation.