# RFC timestamp as EPOCH in data-links

**URL:** <https://community.grafana.com/t/rfc-timestamp-as-epoch-in-data-links/82514>\
**Category:** Dashboards\
**Tags:** timestamp, data-links, influxdb, influx\
**Created:** [February 24, 2023, 12:58pm UTC](https://community.grafana.com/t/rfc-timestamp-as-epoch-in-data-links/82514 "2023-02-24T12:58:51Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![szalontaymate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e495f1/32.png) [@szalontaymate](https://community.grafana.com/u/szalontaymate)\
**Post date:** [February 24, 2023, 12:58pm UTC](https://community.grafana.com/t/rfc-timestamp-as-epoch-in-data-links/82514/1 "2023-02-24T12:58:52Z")

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Hello

I’d like to use some fields in my table with a data-link as dashboard variables _ **from** _ and _ **to** _.  
The field contains a RFC formatted string. How can I convert this to epoch and use it in a data-link?

tried with _ **${fields.sessionStartTime:date:seconds}** _ and _ **${fields.sessionStartTime:format:epoch:seconds}** _ but they do not resolve

How can I achive this?

Thank you

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**Author:** ![usman.ahmad](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/grafana/user_avatar/community.grafana.com/usman.ahmad/32/29706_2.png) [@usman.ahmad](https://community.grafana.com/u/usman.ahmad)\
**Post date:** [March 2, 2023, 11:55am UTC](https://community.grafana.com/t/rfc-timestamp-as-epoch-in-data-links/82514/2 "2023-03-02T11:55:49Z")

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Hi @szalontaymate,

Welcome to the :grafana: community support forums !!

We are excited that you joined our OSS community. Please read about some of the [FAQs](https://community.grafana.com/faq) in the community 🙂

Did you already check the documentation regarding it i.e.

> **[Add and manage variables | Grafana documentation](https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/dashboards/variables/add-template-variables/# __from-and-__ to)**
>
> Add and manage variables The following table lists the types of variables shipped with Grafana.
> Variable type Description Query Query-generated list of values such as metric names, server names, sensor IDs, data centers, and so on. Add a query...

Let us know if this helps.

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**Author:** ![peterk3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c57346/32.png) [@peterk3](https://community.grafana.com/u/peterk3)\
**Post date:** [March 21, 2024, 12:42pm UTC](https://community.grafana.com/t/rfc-timestamp-as-epoch-in-data-links/82514/3 "2024-03-21T12:42:46Z")

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Hi @usman.ahmad

There isn’t any solution for this problem in your answer / links.  
I have the same problem and I didn’t find any solution since 1 year.  
We don’t want to get the current dashboard time-range to the variable, but as @szalontaymate wrote, the timestamps to ábe added to data link are in a table (and they are not the same as the current dashboard start and stop time, so we are talking about completely different things)

To make it simple:

We have a table where we have several fields, 2 of the field are time stamps in following (string) format: “2023-08-05 05:23:26”

This is not epoch format, thats why we can’t use it for data link (as a “from” or “to”) because it only accept epoch.

Could you please help?

(There isn’t any solution for this in your links)

Thank you!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![usman.ahmad](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/grafana/user_avatar/community.grafana.com/usman.ahmad/32/29706_2.png) [@usman.ahmad](https://community.grafana.com/u/usman.ahmad)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2024, 10:06am UTC](https://community.grafana.com/t/rfc-timestamp-as-epoch-in-data-links/82514/4 "2024-03-28T10:06:44Z")

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Hi @peterk3,

Welcome to the :grafana: community support forums !!

We are excited that you joined our OSS community. Please read about some of the [FAQs](https://community.grafana.com/faq) in the community 🙂

We would appreciate it if you can open a bug report about this in our official GitHub repository using this [link](https://github.com/grafana/grafana/issues/new?assignees=&labels=type%3A+bug&template=1-bug_report.md).

Provide all the information (you can simply copy/paste your data + screenshot from here to there).

Lastly, paste the link to your GitHub issue here in this post so that all other community users can also track it. I will also add more additional information to it 👍