Localizing a TM1 model, part 2

[Wim Gielis]

Hello all,

Edit: Topic is moving in the right direction, see 2nd post below for an update.


As you might know, I live in Belgium where we have 3 official languages: Dutch, French, German. Include English to the mix as well as TM1 models that are used globally and you understand that localizing a TM1 model is very important for the user experience AND maintaining/extending the model. So some time ago I started off here and in the meantime I made good progress.

We can for instance have this result in PAW:

04.png (73.49 KiB) Viewed 2289 times

whereby I localize using a TI process:
- visible in the screenshots: element names, dimension names
- not visible in the screenshots: cube name, subset names, view names, process names
- not looked at yet: hierarchies in PA speak

I can add the TI process for someone who wants to experiment as well.

We only need to set/change the language in the browser and refresh to see the update. If you want to update the UI in PAW in a different language, you need to close the book and reopen.

With the Caption alias this works fine (as documented in the manuals) but we can also localize any attribute.
For example, the month long name can be adjusted, but also the short name. The advantage is huge, instead of having six aliases (long name EN, long name FR, long name NL, short name EN, short name FR, short name NL) and even more with more languages/locales, we can suffice with "long name" and "short name".

Caption can also be a text attribute instead of an alias but my first concern is aliases.

Challenge
You will understand the one issue here. The users can switch aliases:

05.png (79.72 KiB) Viewed 2289 times

I would like to localize the 2 alias names too since someone who does not understand English (which is rare but still) will not want to see Caption and Caption_Short. Yes, we can train the users, and yes we can be consistent in our naming of aliases over the different dimensions/hierarchies but still I prefer to see:
- "Long name" and "Short name" if language = English
- "Nom long" and "Nom court" if language = French
- "Lange naam and "Korte naam" if language = Dutch

So the question is this:
- can we localize attribute names ? According to the documentation yes: https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgece ... model.html
- in general, can we have in TM1 attributes on attributes ? (Control objects on control objects)

06.png (73.99 KiB) Viewed 2276 times

I agree that localizing models will be more of a challenge when users file an issue with screenshots in their own language, but to me being able to localize TM1 objects is a big step forward. The element names and translations will be probably stored in a relational database or text files as a second best approach.

I will test if the natural language search engine supports the localized names too such that users can write in their own language.

[Let's not forget that picklists towards subsets and dimensions might be impacted, so we (might) need to extract the principal element name.]

Thanks a lot !

[Wim Gielis]

Update:

Good news, it works in TM1 Web on my local machine, 2.0.6. See A in green.

01.png (87.5 KiB) Viewed 2267 times

I have no PAW installed on my machine.
On the remote machine where I used PAW I cannot be certain about the TM1 server version but I think it's 2.0.4.

What does not seem to work in TM1 Web 2.0.6 is the localized view and subset names. See B and C it should be 'Par défaut' instead of 'Default'. I don't understand why since the functionality works in PAW (2.0.4 I think) but on that server with PAW 2.0.4 TM1 Web does not work so I cannot test it there.
If anyone else can test it, please post here.

02.png (17.4 KiB) Viewed 2266 times

Wim

[Catherine]

Hi everybody,

Wim, your post is really interesting.

I have a few questions related to localisation. I am so far interested in PAX, not in PAW.

In Perspectives, I used to create 2 default views or default subsets : one with french aliases (Par Défaut), and one with english aliases (Default).
Depending on Perspectives language, when double-clicking on a cube, one of those two views was opening.

I tried to do the same in PAX, but I noticed the following behavior when double-cliking on a cube :
-If a private view exists, it opens (if several exist, the first one in alphabetical order opens)
-If no private view exist, this is always the Default view that opens, even if my PAX is in French.

Can somebody confirm this behavior ?

I tried to implement the localisation and filled the caption for the 2 languages "Fr" and "En".
In my Default view, I chose the Caption alias.
When opening the Default view with PAX in English, I can see the "En" caption.
When opening the Default view with PAX in French, I can see the "Fr" caption.

So this is good.
But is there a way that caption is linked to Excel language and not to PAX language ?

Thank you