LiveAgent allows you to personalize language metadata settings, including date and time formats, number separators, and text direction. These settings influence how date, time, and numerical values are displayed in tickets, reports, and other areas.
To adjust language metadata settings in LiveAgent, navigate to Configuration > System > Languages, select the language you want to edit by clicking on the Edit button (Pencil icon) in the Actions column, and navigate to the Language metadata tab.
Configurable language metadata fields
You can change the pattern in the Date format, Time format, and Short time format fields to display the date and/or time in your preferred style.
Please note that patterns are case sensitive.
Understanding Date and Time Format Patterns
Each date and time format pattern consists of a combination of letters that determines how the date and time are displayed. Patterns are case sensitive, and the number of letters used affects the format:
- Text
- Use 4 or more letters for the full form (e.g. "EEEE" generates "Friday")
- Use fewer than 4 for the abbreviated form, if its available (e.g. "EEE" generates "Fri")
- Number
- Use any number of letters, shorter numbers will be zero-padded to the specified length (e.g. "m" generates "6" and "mm" generates "06")
- Unlike other fields, fractional seconds are padded with zeros on the right (e.g. "SS" generates "92" and "SSS" generates "920")
- The year is handled especially - if the count of 'y' is 2, the Year will be truncated to the last 2 digits. (e.g. "yyyy" generates "1997" and "yy" generates "97")
- Use any number of letters, shorter numbers will be zero-padded to the specified length (e.g. "m" generates "6" and "mm" generates "06")
- Text or Number
- Use 3 letters or more for text (e.g. "MMM" generates "Jan", and "MMMM" generates "January")
- Use fewer than 3 letters for numbers (e.g. "M" generates "1" and "MM" generates "01")
Characters outside the [a-z] and [A-Z] ranges are treated as quoted text. For example, characters like space, dot, colon, semicolon, hashtag, anchor, etc. will be displayed in the resulting date and time even if they are not enclosed within ' ' custom text enclosing marks. The following symbols can be used to create custom date and time format patterns:
| Symbol | Meaning | Presentation | Example |
| s | Second | Number | 55 |
| m | Minute | Number | 30 |
| H | Hour in 24h format (0-23) | Number | 21 |
| h | Hour in 12h AM/PM format (1-12) | Number | 11 |
| a | AM/PM marker | Text | PM |
| S | Fractional second | Number | 978 |
| d | Day in month | Number | 10 |
| M | Month in year | Text or Number | July (or) 07 |
| y | Year | Number | 1996 |
| G | Era designator | Text | AD |
| E | Day of week | Text | Tuesday |
| k | Hour in 24h format (1-23) | Number | 24 |
| K | Hour in 12h AM/PM format (0-11) | Number | 0 |
| z | Time zone (UTC) | Text | UTC -2 |
| Z | Time zone (RFC 822/ZULU) | Number | -0800 |
| v | Time zone (Generic) | Text | ETC/GMT -2 |
| ' | Custom text enclosing mark | Delimiter | custom text |
| '' | Single quote | Literal | ' |
Examples
Here are some examples of custom date and time format patterns and their resulting formatted text:
| Pattern | Formatted Text |
| yyyy.MM.dd G 'at' HH:mm:ss v | 2023.04.28 AD at 13:58:56 ETC/GMT -2 |
| EEE, MMM d, ''yy | Wed, July 10, '96 |
| h:mm a | 12:08 PM |
| hh 'o''clock' a, z | 11 o'clock PM, UTC +2 |
| K:mm a, v | 0:00 PM, ETC/GMT -2 |
| yyyyy.MMMM.dd G hh:mm a | 01996.July.10 AD 12:08 PM |
Overriding all languages by uniform metadata settings
LiveAgent also offers the option to override the language metadata settings of all languages and apply uniform settings for all agents. For that, navigate to Configuration > General > Regional settings.