Date + Time

[Anonymous]

If you are to believe @marcorusso ... when you have both date AND time... you should split them into seperate columns.  No arguments here.

However... I am having a hard time finding a visual experience that... doesn't suck.  I would love to be able to easy drag to zoom from months to days to minutes/seconds, etc.   But even ignoring an actual "good" experience, many visuals don't even allow both date and time to be on axis.

Anybody have ideas around this?

[v-jiascu-msft]

@Anonymous

Hi,

It seems that there isn't a perfect solution. Maybe you can try Matrix visual. Or you can submit an idea or vote an idea here. Please have a try.

https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/15850894-time-hierarchy-to-see-trends-within-a-day

Best Regards!

Dale

[Phil_Seamark]

Hi @Anonymous

Your model will be much faster, smaller and more resposive if you split into two columns.  Have you considered using a hierarchy and drill down for zooming in to time from date?  

What visual are you using?

[Anonymous]

Thanks Dudes.

I don't disagree from a pure modeling standpoint, but once I go to create visuals it is not that fun.  Unclear though how related that is to separate tables.

I am mostly using a line chart -- I'm trying to show changes over time (maybe think... stock chart).  It works... vaguely ok.  At least I can place as many drill down fields as I want -- though only selecting a single point isn't great (I want to zoom in from 1:30 to 2:30... too bad).  And the axis labels get super ugly.

Some other visuals just don't support multiple fields (like, maybe 3rd party visuals...  pulse chart or zoom chart would be interesting, but they ONLY support a single field, presumably date, unless you build a date+time).

I mean compare it to :

http://dygraphs.com/

https://www.highcharts.com/demo/line-time-series

https://plot.ly/r/

I actually stumbled upon a msft beta site w/ nice time series graphing/zooming, but now I can't find it.  Didn't seem in any way related to Power BI but those teams should talk 🙂

[Anonymous]

Found the msft site:

https://insights.timeseries.azure.com