Management Reporter- Date Not Printing Correctly

You may have noticed that the default, in recent versions of Management Reporter, is for reports to open in the web viewer rather than the Report Viewer itself.  Of course, you can change this setting (so that it defaults to the Report Viewer instead) in Report Designer, using Tools>>Options.

You may have noticed though, that the auto text for date (@DateLong) on a header or footer, returns a different result when opening the report in the web viewer or Report Viewer.

When opening a report in the web viewer, the date/time settings (that impact the format of the date presentation) will be pulled from the service account that runs the Management Reporter Process service.  But when you generate a report and it opens in the Report Viewer, it will use your local user account's date/time settings.

So, if you plan to use the web viewer extensively you will want to make sure that the date/time settings are set in the profile of the account that runs the process service.  The default time format, generally includes the day of the week- this is often the element that users want to remove so that the report does not say "Tuesday March 12th, 2019".

Christina Phillips is a Microsoft Certified Trainer and Dynamics GP Certified Professional. She is a senior managing consultant with BKD Technologies, providing training, support, and project management services to new and existing Microsoft Dynamics customers. This blog represents her views only, not those of her employer.