PhixFlow Help

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This page is for application designers who need to have their application interface translated into different languages.

  • The Translate attribute function is being worked on so that it can be used to automatically translate strings (eg. in error messages for action validation) based on the user’s locale
    • No Help page currently exists for the Translate function

When you need to deploy a PhixFlow application across sites in different countries, you can configure PhixFlow to use the locale to translate the application interface. This includes.

  • Labels and Static Text in forms, buttons, tab headers and other areas
  • Grid Column Headings including groupings
  • Menu Items in grid headers

PhixFlow cannot translate the following:

  • Display Name of a grid
  • Menu Items in the application menu. These will appear as translated when a user first logs into the application. However, when the page is reloaded, the menu options will revert to the source language.
  • Action Display Names which are displayed in the tooltips for an attribute action on a grid.
  • Data in grids or forms, including any dynamic text that displays values from data
  • Number formats. 
  • Changing location settings on my computer did not change the thousands separator or the decimal separator

Translation works as follows:

  1. User has an account in PhixFlow (only visible in the full repository and to those with permission)
  2. User is assigned to a user group.
  3. Your application also has user groups - which determines which people can see the application
  4. Each user has a locale setting . When the User's locale setting matches one of the locales you set in the application, the application is translated into the language set for that application.

Remember, everything (except users) needs to be created within the application's repository.


Set up Languages and Locales

Can you use any existing configuration in the repo?

Check the list of Locales in the Full repository? can you reuse them?

Check whether or not the language is already there - drop-down list.


If the language you need is not already available, add the language.

  1. How?

Add a new locale to your application - or use an existing one?

  1. In the application repository, right-click Locale and  Add Locale.
  2. Enter a name for the Locale, and select a language from the Language Name drop-down list. Where does this list come from?

You can only delete a language when it is no longer used by any Locale.

Configuring Translation

Text Strings 

It is important to be consistent in capitalisation and to minimise the strings, as you need to create entries that pair the text to all the translations.

Translation does not apply to the PhixFlow interface itself. Any notification, warning or error messages reported by PhixFlow will continue to be in English.

An application is able to translate text using the information in its translation table. The table contains a list of whole text strings which must exactly match those used in the application.

The translation table must include all variants of a string, for example, with different:

  • spelling variants
  • capitalisation
  • spacing
  • punctuation.

For each text string you must add the translation for each language you want to support. 

It is not possible to break the strings into substrings or translation. For example, you must translate  ‘First Name’ and ‘Family Name’ separately, rather than creating translation strings for 'first', 'family' and 'name'.

Create and populate the translation table

  1. In the application repository, right-click Translation Table and click  Add.
  2. In Basic Settings → Name, add a name.
  3. In Translation Entries, add entry codes for each string that you need to translate.
  4. Click  Add to open a New Translation Entry properties tab. Set:
    1. Basic Settings → Entry Code: the string that is to be translated - exactly matching how it appears in the interface.
    2. Translation Cell: add an entry for each language the string will be translated into (how?) and set:
      • Translation String to the translated version
      • Language Name to the language

Date Time Formats

Depending on a user's locale, PhixFlow can change the way it displays dates and times. The mappings are expressed using dd/MM/yyyy strings. If you want to translate month names or abbreviations, such as "January" is not translated to  "Janvier", "Jan" is not translated to "Janv", use text string translation. 

Step 1.  Create a date-time format

  1. In the application repository, right-click Date Time Formats and click  Add.
  2. In Basic Settings, set:
    • Name, add a name. Consider relating the name to the locale.
    • Date Time Format String: use d, M, y, H, m and s to specify the format - link to relevant page on dddmmm etc
      If you do not configure any mappings, PhixFlow uses this format to display date-times for all locales.

Step 2.  Map the format to alternative formats for each locale

  1. For each locale, add a Date Style Mapping.
  2. Click  Add to open a New Date Style Mapping tab. Set:
    • Date Format: use d, M, y, H, m and s to specify the format you want to use for the locale, for example dd/MM/yyyy or dd-MM-yy HH:mm:ss.
    • Date Style Name: the Date Style you created for the Locale 
      I cannot add the name and I cannot save the mapping
  3. Click  OK to save and close the properties tab.

Step 3.  Add the Date Time Format to your Locale

  1. In the application repository, open the locale for your application.
  2. In Basic Settings → Date Style Name, select the format you just created from the drop-down list.


Ensure all Date Time Formats are removed from a locale before deleting them from the repository.

Do not delete Date Styles that have mappings referring to them – this leads to a bug where the Date Time Formats that had mappings to the deleted Date Style bring up an error when opening their configuration forms and cannot be deleted, and the Locale that used the deleted Date Style can no longer translate dates (Jira raised for this)



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