Xcelsius is a cool presentation tool to design and display dashboards. I was recently working on a project with the requirement of showing current time on the dashboard. There is no time or clock component in xcelsius to achieve this.

First I tried using Excel's NOW() function. The problem with now function is that it only displays the static time when you first open the dashboard. The time won't change after that even when you refresh dashboard connections. 

There is a neat trick using History component to achieve this functionality. 

1. Use now() function to populate current date and time in a cell (say A1) and format the cell to display time in HH:MM:SS format

2. In another cell (say E1) put the formula "=A1". Now E1 displays the current time as A1.

3. Drag history component (under other) on to the canvas 

4. Put the formula "=E1+TIME(0,0,1)" in a cell say C1

4. Map data filed of history component to C1 and map Data Insertion field to E1 and select on interval 1 second option.

5. The E1 cell displays the current time. Map E1 cell to a text label component to display it on the dashboard.

Demo: Below is the clock application built using xcelsius by following above steps.