Changing date field format, process models names become question marks

RE: Changing date field format, process models names become question marks

erazemk6135 — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 10:49:40 GMT

I understand now, thank you. The nodes seem to correctly fall back to the US locale name when the GB name is empty, even though I have GB enabled. This does not happen for process names as they appear in designer as question marks or empty. I solved this by manually going through each process and basically copying process names etc. from US to GB in the project properties. Luckily this was only 20 process models or so.

RE: Changing date field format, process models names become question marks

Stefan Helzle — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 09:28:23 GMT

Models do not have a locale, but rely on the enabled locales and the standard locale as defined in the admin console. In the model designer, you will see the locale of your account. When you add nodes, it will only populate the node name etc. in your locale. But you can switch to other locales in the node properties and enter these values.

Deploying to an environment with a different language setup can lead to issues.

As a baseline, I try to define EN_US as the default language and make all developers use this locale. Any additional language or localization can be enabled and if I do not enter the translated values, EN_US will be the fallback.

RE: Changing date field format, process models names become question marks

erazemk6135 — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 09:00:16 GMT

Ok so correct me if I am wrong: I need to set the locale at the beginning of the application development. I can't change the locale of the models now. I did not disable the original locale, I just changed the primary locale but this somehow doesn't keep the old locale as available to the process models even though it is included in the enabled locales.

I have one final question to understand this locale thing:
Let's say I develop my application on platform with locale A. Then I export this application to a production platform with locale B. This will mangle all process models names am I correct?

RE: Changing date field format, process models names become question marks

Stefan Helzle — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 08:52:45 GMT

User locale is a per-platform setting, not a per-application setting. If you want, you can limit the locale to just one.

Process models are created with the locale the designer has at the time of creation. If you disable that locale later, the model has no text strings for that new locale and show question marks.

RE: Changing date field format, process models names become question marks

erazemk6135 — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 08:42:36 GMT

I agree that to display a date outside the date field is bad UX and that is not an option for me. I changed my user locale and it worked. However, this would mean that all the users have to change their own locale manually? I want it to be pre-set to this locale because I don't want them to have to control this aspect of the application. I still do not understand why process models become question marks.

RE: Changing date field format, process models names become question marks

Stefan Helzle — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 08:34:37 GMT

The date field cannot be customized in how is accepts and formats the date.

If you need/want to display a date, outside the date field in a different formatting, it can become confusing for the user.

But, whether all of this is a problem or not, in your situation, I cannot say.

BTW, you do not need to go to the admin console to change the locale of your specific user. That's done in the user settings.

RE: Changing date field format, process models names become question marks

erazemk6135 — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 08:01:58 GMT

a!dateField(
  label: "Start Date",
  labelPosition: "ABOVE",
  value: ri!date,
  saveInto: ri!date
)

This is the code I am talking about. If I set the (display) value to text(ri!date, "dd/mm/yyyy") it doesn't work and it's not saving to ri!date.
Why is it a problem if I change the user locale? Let's say I need to test how things will look for different locales, that should be possible right?

RE: Changing date field format, process models names become question marks

Stefan Helzle — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 07:53:09 GMT

By default, Appian localizes the format of dates and numbers based on your user locale.

If you need to display things in a different way, you can use the text() function.

Keep in mind that users might expect to get "their" formatting so overwriting the default can become an issue.