Features and display settings

This topic describes the display settings in a multilingual user interface.

Regional settings

Regional settings allow you to set formatting options that affect how dates, numbers, and currency values are displayed in PPM. MLU and language packs do not affect these formatting options. For more information about how to specify regional settings, see Change your settings.

Currency display in MLU

PPM can display cost data for entities such as projects and financial summaries in different currencies, depending on the region associated with each entity. A given entity can only be associated with one region at a time. All cost data associated with that entity is managed in the local currency of the entity's region. In addition, all costs are also converted to the system base currency. Costs associated with an entity can typically be displayed either in the local currency of the entity's region, or in the system base currency. For more information, see Financial Management.

It is important to note that a user's regional settings do not determine which currency is displayed for that user. As noted above, currencies are always displayed in the respective local currency of the region associated with the entity that contains the cost data (or in the system base currency). However, the user's regional settings do determine how that currency value is formatted for display. That is, the regional settings determine whether the currency symbol is displayed on the right or left of the number, whether the number value itself includes a comma or a period as the decimal separator, and so on.

Notifications in MLU

Notifications are email messages sent to alert team members when specific events occur. Four applications in PPM support notifications. However, only one application, Demand Management, supports notification translation using MLU (see Table 2-1. Notification Translation).

Table 2-1. Notification Translation
Application	Entities with Notifications	How Notifications are Translated
Demand Management	Request types, workflows	Managed translation (MLU)
Project Management	Tasks	Language pack (Because these are standard, non-configurable messages, standard translations are included for them with language pack deployment.)
Resource Management	Resource pools, staffing profiles	Language pack (Because these are standard, non-configurable messages, standard translations are included for them with language pack deployment.)
Time Management	Time sheet policies	Create a separate policy per region

Demand Management notifications are sent to recipients in the system language of the PPM instance (as selected for the PPM installation). The formatting of dates and numbers displayed in notification messages is based on each recipient’s formatting locale (as specified on the Regional Settings tab of the Edit My Profile page). For more information about translating entities such as Demand Management notifications see Managing Entity Translations

Formats for Dates, Numbers, and Currency Values in Email Notifications

Dates, numbers, and currency values in email notifications are formatted based on the recipient's regional settings. Note that, if a user uses a date field from a request in a notification, the value is always displayed the "long" format, even if the configuration specifies the medium or short format for the field.

Export translated PPM content to PDF

You can export PPM content that uses multiple languages to PDF. This includes translated PPM Dashboard page content, project overview pages, work plans, portlet data, and task schedules.

For information about how to export portlet content and Dashboard pages to PDF files, see Use PPM Dashboard. For information about how to export project overview pages, task schedules, and work plans to PDF, see Project Management.

Export to Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Project

To ensure that number and date formatting corresponds to third-party software used with PPM (such as Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Project), you must specify the same regional settings (locale) on both your client system (PC) and your PPM account. For information about how to specify regional settings for your system, see the documentation for your operating system. For instructions on how to specify regional settings for your PPM account, see Change your settings.

Language support for web service operations

The system language on your PPM instance is used for the web service operations that write data into PPM (create and update services). To work with the data in the languages supported (and enabled) on PPM, specify the session language in the SOAP header.

PPM does not support working with the data in multiple languages in a single web service call. Multiple, separate web service transactions are required, and you must specify the session language for each.

Web service special commands also rely on the selected session language. To work with the data in a different language, you must change your session language.

For information about the Web services available for you to use in your PPM deployment, see Web services .