Regional Profiles provide a useful method for pre-formatting number, currency, time and date settings in Lasernet. Regional Profiles can then be used to generate forms tailored to specific countries or regions. For example, the 17th March 2016, is usually represented as 17/03/2016 in the UK, whereas in the USA it is usually presented as 03/17/2016. Regional Profiles will automatically perform conversion where they are applied.

Accessing Regional Profiles

To access the Regional Profile settings in Lasernet, click the Profiles tab in the Tools menu. If the Regional Profile button isn’t visible, click the button shown at the bottom right of the image below. This will bring up any hidden options.

All of the regional profiles that are in the open build will now be shown in the main Lasernet window. By default there will only be one. 

Double-click on any regional profile to bring up the profile properties window as shown below. From here the profiles can now be customised. To add a new profile, click the Add button in the Toolbar.

Lasernet comes with pre-installed regional profiles which can be viewed by clicking on the Import button. This will bring up a list of installed profiles that can be edited or a new profile created. To edit an existing profile or create a new one, click the different tab sections at the top of a profile to bring up the relevant editable settings.

Using the profiles

To use a Regional Profile in a form and on a rearrange, follow these steps:

1. Open the rearrange properties and open the Input tab. Choose the Format category for the data from the following options: Number, Currency, Time or Date.

This will bring up two new tabs called Input format and Output format which are shown below:

2. To enable the regional profiles on the input or output of the selected rearrange, click on the Override form input format checkbox.

You must always use an Input regional profile and ensure that it reflects the data that is being passed in, as this ‘tells’ Lasernet what input format to expect so that it can be interpreted correctly. For example, if your data contains a date in the format 17/03/2016, then make sure you use an input profile that has the date setting as dd/MM/yyyy.

Using the drop-down box will show all of the regional profiles in the build. Once a regional profile been selected, the changes to the data format can be previewed using the Preview button or by clicking Shift + F5.

Example

Below are two examples of using regional profiles to convert data into another country’s correct format.

Currency – Converting a UK formatted value to a German format.

Date – Converting a UK formatted date to a USA format.