Globalization considerations

The visual appearance of the dashboards represents the national and cultural differences of its users. The design of WebSphere® Business Monitor dashboard views addresses such differences as language, calendar, and time in different countries and regions, and supports organizations that work in multicultural environments.

As a host of the dashboards, WebSphere Portal determines the global settings of the dashboard views. The global settings include the user’s preferred calendar system, time zone, and language. These global settings are configured through the user’s profile in WebSphere Portal. When a calendar type is selected in the user’s profile, the date values displayed in the views change to reflect the culture of the selected calendar type. For example, when you select an Islamic calendar type, the dates in the dashboard views change to represent Islamic months written in the user-selected language. You can select among various calendar types, such as Gregorian, Japanese, Taiwanese, Buddhist, and Islamic (Civil).

For the current release, Monitor Dashboards only support Gregorian calendar for date selection. The Gregorian calendar is used to specify a date range for generating a report or retrieving information. This calendar is used in the Reports, Export Values and Active Instances views.

The time zone settings also affect data presentation in the dashboard views with respect to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). When a time zone is selected, the displayed time values change to represent the selected time zone. For example, if you select GMT -6:00 (to indicate Central Time in the USA and Canada), the time shown on your dashboard views will be Central Time. Note that if no time zone is selected in the profile, the time values are displayed in the time zone of Runtime database.

In order for business users to select the preferred calendar system and preferred time zone, the WebSphere Portal administrator must enable the business user's selection of these attributes. To enable a user to select calendar system and time zone, the administrator must perform the following steps:
  1. From the WebSphere Portal banner, click Administration > Access > Users and Groups > All Authenticated Portal Users, and then click the Edit icon next to the user to whom you want to enable the selection of calendar and time zone.
  2. From the Edit My Profile portlet, click the Configure icon.
  3. Select the ibm-timezone and ibm-preferred calendar check boxes, and then click OK.
  4. Click OK in the Edit My Profile portlet.
By completing these steps, the administrator has provided the selected user the option to select calendar and time zone.

The language settings control the language and formats of displayed data in the dashboard views. Interface data, like fields and labels, is written in English. The format of displayed data within the dashboard views is affected if the language changes. For example, if you select the Arabic language, the decimal numbers appear in Arabic format: a comma is used instead of a dot as the decimal sign. The calendar months also change to Arabic, regardless of the calendar type.

To determine which language to apply to the dashboard views, the WebSphere Portal performs a search. The search begins when the user logs into the WebSphere Portal to access the dashboards. Based on the search result, the content displayed on the user's Web browser changes. The sequence of search results goes as follows:
  1. If the user's WebSphere Portal user profile specifies a language, the dashboard views will show the selected language.
  2. If the user's profile does not specify a language, the WebSphere Portal searches for the language defined in the user's browser. If the dashboards support that language, the views show that language. If the browser has more than one language defined, the WebSphere Portal uses the first language on the list.
  3. If no language is defined in the user's Web browser, the WebSphere Portal uses its own default language. The default language is specified during installation of the WebSphere Portal. A Portal administrator can change the default language after installation.
  4. If the user is displaying a view that does not support the language specified in the user profile browser, the view is shown in its own default language.
The selected language reflects its format on displayed data in the dashboard views.


Copyright IBM Corporation 2005, 2006. All Rights Reserved.