How to Show Current Date in Google Data Studio Dashboards (In Specified Timezone)

Looking to display today's date in your Data Studio Report? You've found the best tutorial here! This dynamic approach allows the date to be updated daily based on your current timezone.

How to Create Calculated Field to Show Current Date

Within 5 minutes, this video guides you on how to get current date in Data Studio Report (using calculated field), and display it on the dashboard.

We'll also be exploring to create a DYNAMIC TITLE, whereby the DATE gets updated daily based on your current time zone.

Step 1: Create a Calculated Field to Get Today's Date

First of all, we'll need to create a calculated field. Simply tap "Add a field" at the property panel. In the window, enter the formula CURRENT_DATE(), this would give you the date at UTC timezone.


Step 2: Specify Timezone for Date

In Data Studio, there are 2 ways to may indicate the timezone of the current date time. 

Using Time Zone Name

For instance, you may specify timezone using TZ Database Time Zones Names. Visit this list to find your location correspond timezone name, under the field "TZ database name".

How to find Looker Studio timezone name for date functions or formulas.png

Sample Usage: CURRENT_DATE("Asia/Kuala_Lumpur")

Using Zone Offset

Personally, I prefer to use zone offset method to indicate timezone for the current date. Reason being its more straightforward and the report editors can easily understand the semantic of the formula.

Sample Usage: CURRENT_DATE("+08") 

Step 3: Important Trick: Convert Dimension to Metrics

Before we move on, we'll need to add a formula MAX() to return the maximum value. In fact we'll only have a single date in this field, but we need this formula to trick Data Studio to treat this field as metric. This is very important step, or else you would get numbers instead of the date displayed.

Sample Usage: MAX( CURRENT_DATE("+08") )

If this step is set up correctly, you should see the field shown as blue colour in the property panel. In Google Data Studio, blue-coloured text field represents metrics; green-colour represents dimension.

 

Step 4: Add a Scorecard

Next, to display the date, we'll need a scorecard chart. To add a scorecard chart, click Add a chart and select scorecard chart icon. Then, drag-and-drop the calculated field to Metrics.

You've now successfully show the current date in the report.

 

Adding Text with Current Date

In some use case, we may want to add some text label before or after the current date for dashboard design purpose. In this section, we are going to add text label before the date value. 

First of all, we are going to create a new calculated field. Then, enter a formula CONCAT(), which can be used to combine multiple string text. In the bracket, type in the prefix title in quotes (" "), followed by the calculated field for current date, created in Step 3.

Sample Usage: CONCAT( "Total Sales As Of", Current Date, "✔️" )

You may move on to hide the metric name, so the custom title looks just like normal text. To do that, click the scorecard, go to Property Panel > Style. Under Labels, tick Hide Metric Name.

For more formatting customisation, please watch the video in this article :)

 

Recommended Articles

Do you want to learn more about how to deal with dates, datetime or timestamps data in Google Data Studio / Looker Studio?  Below are some of the resources you may want to check out!

 

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