Display Formats
Three settings decide how dates are written throughout the application.
Where to find it
Architect Panel → Configuration:
- Site Settings — the option groups, grouped by subject
The three
- Date — day, month and year. The default is day first.
- Date and time — the above with hours and minutes.
- Date and time with seconds — for anything where precision matters, such as logs.
They use the standard formatting characters, so any arrangement is possible.
Numeric dates are genuinely ambiguous
The central problem. 03/04/2026 is the third of April to a British reader and the fourth of March to an American one, and nothing in the string says which.
If your users are all in one country, the local convention is fine. If they are not, or if the date will be read outside your organisation, use a format with a named month — it cannot be misread.
Prefer four-digit years
Always. Two-digit years save two characters and introduce a genuine ambiguity, and there is no situation where they are worth it.
Choose one clock and keep it
Twelve-hour with a meridiem, or twenty-four hour. Both are fine; mixing them within an application is not, and it happens when the three formats are set at different times by different people.
Seconds where they earn their place
Logs, audit trails, anything where ordering within a minute matters. Not on a due date, where they are noise.
Consistency is worth more than elegance
A single readable format used everywhere beats a clever arrangement used in some places and not others. Users learn one format quickly and misread a second one indefinitely.
They must match the conversion formats
The separate database-side conversion formats have to describe the same arrangement. A display format saying day-first and a conversion format saying month-first will disagree for the first twelve days of every month and agree thereafter — which is a bug that appears and disappears.
Set them at installation
Changing formats later is safe — no data changes — but it does change every screen and every export at once. Better to settle it early.
Worked example
An organisation with users in three countries chose a named-month format for display and matched its conversion formats to it. A test on the fifth of a month confirmed both agreed, which had previously masked a mismatch that only showed after the twelfth.
Recommendations
- Named months where readers are international.
- Four-digit years, always.
- One clock convention across all three formats.
- Match the conversion formats and test after the twelfth.