Allow Custom DateTime Display Formats

[HannaSinger]

It would improve usability if users could configure the display format for datetime values. Currently, when a datetime format is selected, the value is always displayed with seconds and milliseconds. The client would like the option to display only the hours and minutes, without seconds or milliseconds.

We are using Visual Investigator 2025/09, Release: 20251209.1765255106922.

[PaigeMiller]

As I said in another one your suggestions, I don't think this belongs in Suggestions. When some numbers aren't displayed as you want, you could simply apply the right format/function to the data before displaying it. SAS already gives you all the tools to display dates, datetimes and times in whatever way you want.

So if you have a variable named DATETIME which contains year, date, month, hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds, you could create a new variable which contains the time part and format it as you wish.

In a SAS data step

hour_min = timepart(datetime);
format hour_min hhmm.;

[HannaSinger]

Thanks for your answer.

As I mentioned above, we are working with Visual Investigator. There is no built-in capability to use a DATA step, so the only available options are to select either the Date or Timestamp data type.

[Kurt_Bremser]

One must make such transformations (assignment of formats, extraction of sub-values etc.) when the dataset is prepared for analysis. This is a job for your data engineers.

[HannaSinger]

To clarify the issue, I have attached some screenshots.

In this example, we are referring to the Date-Time Created field, which is of the Timestamp data type.

In the Table view of the object, the value is displayed with seconds and milliseconds, as shown in the screenshot. This is not the desired format for the customer.

In the Detail view of the object, the same field is displayed correctly, showing only the hours and minutes. The field in the Detail view is configured as shown in the "Field Settings on the Page" screenshot. However, this type of configuration is not available for the Table view.

The value is stored correctly in the database, and, as mentioned earlier, we have not found any way to configure the display format for the Table view so that only the hours and minutes are shown.