Date format in Crosstabs

[Former Member]

Hello experts,

I already posted a question in the BI Plateform space, but got no answers yet ...

I'm trying my luck here as the issue is with Design Studio on the BI Plateform.

The message is here:

And here's the content:

We have BIP 4.1 SP3 and are using both universes and BW. BW has been upgraded from 7.0.1 to 7.4 and all of the old WAD needed to be replaced. We choosed to use Design Studio and the Generic analysis template.

We have encountered several problem during it, but the last and thougher one is the date format.
Before with the WAD on BW, the SU01 paramters were taken in account and the date was displayed with YYYY/MM/DD. Now with Design Studio on BIP, the CMC preference language and its associated ISO date format is taken in account.

Users are all using English US, which give us the format: m/D/YYYY which is a no go as it is a massive change for the massive population of BW. Unfortunately, none of the installed languages gives us buth the correct language and date format.

We do not have any problem with WEBI or other BO software as, most of the time, formulas can be used to adjust the format.

Do you know if it is possible to alter the BI Plateform date format associated to the different installed language pack ? We want to change it plateform wide and make sur all of the users will have exactly the same.

I looked into the different configuration files on BIP without finding something useful ... Any other Idea ?

PS : we're using crosstabs on DS and nothing can be done to alter format ...

Thank you in advance if you have any information. It's a big show stopper for us ...

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I've found a solution, even if, to be honest, it's not the best.

English South Africa seems to give us the correct format: YYYY/MM/DD

You can change it at the user level in the preferences, or pass the paramters to the openDocument function: &COUNTRY=ZA&LANGUAGE=en.

We will still investigate and ask SAP opinion on a plateform wide modification.

EDIT: An idea has been posted regarding this topic Date and time format whatever the viewing locale in the BIP preferences : View Idea

[Former Member]

For instance, before somebody mentions it, here's what the DS 1.6 BIP Guide specifies (8.4):

Example English formatting
If you select English as the preferred viewing locale in the BI launch pad, the following parts of the analysis application are affected:

Message texts and tooltips are displayed in English 
Numbers are displayed in format 11,111.111, for example 43,484.018. 
Dates are displayed in format MM/DD/YYYY, for example 07/29/2012.
Times are displayed in format hh:mm AM/PM, for example 10:30 AM.