i publish metric time in GMT. the data displays in GMT. is there a way to convert the GMT to the users local time when looking at results in the dashboard?
The _time variable will be displayed in the user's local time, and user's local time is controlled by the Preferences settings in the user dropdown menu in Splunk.
If your data is ingested with times being interpreted as GMT and the server time zone is GMT, then when the user views _time, it will be rendered based on the user's settings.
If you are talking about another field, e.g. a string that is showing GMT, then you can do this to get _time
| makeresults
| fields - _time
| eval T="2021-01-26 11:00:00"
| eval _time=strptime(T." GMT", "%F %T %Z")
which will show T as the time above and _time as 2021-01-26 22:00:00, as I am currently GMT+11