Time zones

Embedded Cube surfaces — dashboards, Analytics Chat, and the full app in Creator Mode — bucket time in a zone you control. You can set a default for the whole account, override it per embed with a URL parameter, or switch it at runtime from the host page.

This matters most when your end users are not in your deployment's zone: without it, "today" in an embedded dashboard means today in the deployment's default time zone, not in your customer's.

Available on Premium and above plans.

How the zone is resolved

The time zone of an embedded surface is resolved from the following sources, highest priority first:

1. Runtime override — a cube:action:set-timezone message sent from the host page (see At runtime).
2. URL parameter — the ?timezone= query parameter on the embed URL (see Per embed via URL).
3. Dashboard's own zone — a dashboard pinned to a named zone, or set to resolve per viewer (see dashboard time zone). In signed embedding the viewer has no Cube account and therefore no personal zone, so a viewer-resolved dashboard falls through to the next step — supply ?timezone= if you want each end user's own zone.
4. Account default — the zone configured in Embed → Settings (see Account-wide default).
5. Account-wide zone, then the deployment's default time zone.

A host override outranks a dashboard's pinned zone by design: the integrator is speaking for the whole frame, and you know your user's zone better than the dashboard's author does.

Account-wide default

Set a default time zone for all embedded surfaces:

1. Go to Embed → Settings.
2. In the Time Zone card, pick a zone from the dropdown.

The selected zone applies to every embedded surface across the account, unless a specific embed overrides it. Re-selecting the account-wide zone clears the embed-specific value, so embeds follow the account-wide zone again.

The picker is inert while user time zones are off for the account — a zone stored there would be one nothing applies.

Per embed via URL

Override the account default for an individual embed by adding the ?timezone= query parameter to the embed URL:

https://your-tenant.cubecloud.dev/embed/dashboard/YOUR_DASHBOARD_PUBLIC_ID?session=YOUR_SESSION_ID&timezone=America/New_York

The parameter is read once when the embed loads and pinned for the session, so in-app navigation won't drop it.

Values must be IANA time zone names. An unusable value — including a bare UTC offset like +05:30 — is ignored, and the embed falls back to the account default rather than quietly shifting every number.

At runtime

Switch the zone after the embed has loaded by sending a cube:action:set-timezone message from the host page. This takes precedence over both the URL parameter and the account default — use it when your own user changes their zone:

sendAction("cube:action:set-timezone", { timezone: "Asia/Tokyo" });

See Events and actions for the full host ↔ embed messaging contract.