Currency and Date Internationalization

IntelliGantt for SharePoint supports custom format strings for currency, datetime and number values. We recognize in todays connected environment people from all over the world can be working on the same project. Therefore, rather than using the web browser settings to determine the format of currency, date and number values, we let you set it for everyone via the configuration.js file for a consistent view.

By default IntelliGantt is set to use US dollars, dates and number formatting.

To change these settings locate the configuration.js file your installation is using. It might be co-located with your IntelliGantt aspx page, or it might be in a separate location used by multiple IntelliGantt aspx pages.

In the configuration.js file note the property values currency_format and datetime_format. These are the strings you will be changing. We use the ISO 8601 formatting standards to define years, month, day, hour, minute and second definitions.

Here we've changed them to use Euros and a European number format (where the decimal point and comma have different placements). We've also changed the date format to day/month/year as is common throughout the EU.

Back in IntelliGantt we refresh the browser and see our desired format.

The strings support Unicode so you can just as easily use other currencies and datetime formats to suit your needs.

IntelliGantt Localization

We just posted an update to the IntelliGantt Web Part that supports localization. Specifically, it now supports English, Deutsch, Française, Español, Italiano and 日本語.

Just to be clear, because Silverlight applications (like our IntelliGantt Web Part) actually run on the client, IntelliGantt will use the client settings to display the localized language.

This means if you happen to have the SharePoint language display auf Deutsch but your client OS is using English, then the SharePoint 'chrome' will display in Deutsch while the IntelliGantt Web Part will display English.

For example, here we see the web part in a Deutsche SharePoint page, but my Windows client is English.



Note that the web part editing is completely in Deutsch. Note also there seem to be new editable fields in the admin section, which will be introduced in another post.

So what parts change when SharePoint is presenting the display language of your choice? First of all, your views are available in the native language:



Next, when a view is selected the IntelliGantt updates the Task List column headers to the column headers selected in the SharePoint view, including the display names. Also, the localized choice lists are retrieved as well:




Finally, we look for areas where we can use the SharePoint display language you select in other parts of the IntelliGantt application, like the popup help:




Again, if my Windows client was in Deutsch, you'd see additional changes like the Gantt calendar presenting a bit differently, data/time formats localized and tooltips all in the language of your PC.

Aber habe ich die Deutsch Sprache fast alles vergessen. So I leave it up to the native speakers to see the rest. Just head to our IntelliGantt Web Part page to try it out.

Coming Soon to a Locale Near You

One thing we learned from our IntelliGantt Rich Client and IntelliGantt Add In products is this-- there are a lot of people on the internet and they don't all speak English.

So we designed the IntelliGantt Web Part to be as easily localizable as possible, for all of our benefit. The result, we think, is a clean and simple UI that, in addition to being uncluttered with words, is very quick to localize. In fact, right now we only have 21 strings to translate in the UI. Since SharePoint column and view names come from SharePoint and are already localized, we just had to do a few things like 'Explore' and 'Search'.

If you would like to see the IntelliGantt Web Part localized for your language, here is the list of strings to translate. Either send your list of localized strings to support [at] teamdirection [dot] com or reply with your list in our forum. We will be happy to get your localized strings in as soon as we can to help you and your users.

It's good to be a world citizen.

IntelliGantt Goes Global

We did the 'picture is a thousand words' preview. Here's something with a bit more weight to it.

One thing we've noticed about distributing products via the internet is that ... wait for it ... the internet is world wide! While our US, UK, Australian customers have been pleased, the rest of the world has been letting us know that foreign language support is a really good thing.

We got the message (click to view screencast):



Executive Summary: It shows an IntelliGantt menu changing display names, changing to German and Japanese.

Our approach is rather than translate a product to the top 50 languages and then ship it, we provided built-in tools to make it easy to a) change strings and (more importantly) b) have an idea of exactly what you are changing.

The screencast gives you an idea of this by selecting Menu settings. Future screencasts will show this idea better by clicking on any IntelliGantt form and configuring it with the built-in tool.

What we didn't show in this screencast-- because we didn't want to get too techie-- was where these configurations are stored and how one might go about redistributing a language pack.

The idea is IntelliGantt will look for a named list of xml files, read them in and use the defined strings. You can see these files created by running the application once, then lookin the in AppData/Local/TeamDirection/IntelliGantt/Configuration directory on Vista (did I mention this version will have full Vista support? :).

If someone would like to provide a language specific configuration, they can use the built in tools to generate these XML files, zip them together and create a simple installer for distribution. All the installer will need to do is copy these XML files to the AppData/Local/TeamDirection/IntelliGantt/Configuration directory.

We will be happy to provide a 'Language Pack' html page that refers our customers to local partners that have a language pack or two.

If you have any questions please contact partners [@] teamdirection [.] com.

Vielen Danke and ありがとうございました