Question 1

What do I actually receive after purchasing?

Accepted Answer

You get access to copy the Vega JSON spec directly from this page. Set your date, time zone and styling with the controls, then paste the spec into Ataytis Vega Studio inside Power BI Desktop. Everything travels inside the spec, so there is nothing else to set up.

Question 2

What is Ataytis Vega Studio?

Accepted Answer

Ataytis Vega Studio is our free, Microsoft-certified Power BI visual for rendering Vega specifications inside your reports. Install it once from Microsoft Marketplace in Power BI Desktop, then paste in any spec.

Question 3

Can the date come from my data model?

Accepted Answer

No — the date is set when you copy the spec. Ataytis Vega Studio is Microsoft-certified, which is what lets it be installed in locked-down tenants, and that means the visual reads no fields. In practice the dates this is used for — a launch, a go-live, a quarter end — are decided once and change rarely, so setting the date here and pasting again is quicker than wiring up a table.

Question 4

Does it handle time zones and daylight saving?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and it is the part most countdowns get wrong. A deadline is a wall-clock time somewhere, so you set the date together with its zone and it is resolved to an absolute instant using a real time zone database. That instant does not move when the clocks change, so a countdown set in winter is still correct in summer, wherever the person reading it happens to be.

Question 5

What happens when the countdown reaches zero?

Accepted Answer

It stops at zero and shows whatever message you have set instead of the numbers. It never runs into negative time. If you want it to keep counting past the moment, switch it to counting up and it will show the time elapsed since instead.

Question 6

Will it slow down a report left open all day?

Accepted Answer

No. It redraws once a second only when it is showing seconds; counting in minutes or larger it wakes every thirty seconds instead. There are no network calls and no data queries, so the cost is a little arithmetic and a redraw.

Question 7

Can I show progress through a period rather than a countdown?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Set it to run between two dates and it shows how far through you are, with an optional bar. It is a natural fit for a sprint, a quarter, a campaign or a contract term — anywhere the useful question is how much is left rather than what the date is.

Question 8

Does everyone reading the report see the same countdown?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The deadline is a fixed instant, so everybody sees the same time remaining wherever they are — which is the point of resolving the zone up front rather than leaving it to each viewer’s machine.

AtaytisTech Visuals

AtaytisTech Library

Countdown Timer

How it works

AtaytisTech Visuals

AtaytisTech Library

Countdown Timer

How it works