hello, I am sending kafka JSON messages with following structure.

{data: string, timestamp: yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss:ms zone ,  attra: string, mainattr: {attra: string,  attrb:string, attrc: string}}

consumed by pinot. Would like to check whether the "timeColumnName" should match the "timestamp" from the kafka messsage. if I have to match how will I specify the date format ? "segmentsConfig": { "timeColumnName": "mergedTimeMillis", "timeType": "MILLISECONDS",

you can create the field with simpledateformat(https://docs.pinot.apache.org/basics/components/schema#creating-a-schema) or have a transform function during ingestion to convert it to epoch value (https://docs.pinot.apache.org/developers/advanced/ingestion-level-transformations#column-transformation)

great let me check this , Thanks @Xiang Fu