IBM Exported dates to IBM FileNet Content Engine are one day off in IBM Datacap Taskmaster Capture - United States FileNet P8; FNP8; Export; yesterday; GMT; UTC TECHNOTE (TROUBLESHOOTING)

PROBLEM(ABSTRACT)
 Dates exported to IBM FileNet P8 Content Engine show yesterday's date when viewed by an IBM FileNet Content Engine client 

CAUSE
IBM FileNet Content Engine stores all time stamps using UTC format. If a date is passed into IBM FileNet Content Engine with no time component then the time defaults to midnight UTC, which may indicate the prior date when converted back into local time.
Taskmaster does not convert or handle dates in GMT/UTC and thus any date values must be formatted by the application rules prior to export to IBM FileNet Content Engine


RESOLVING THE PROBLEM
Modify the date/time value into proper GMT/UTC format of YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM[:SS] and then add a time offset to account for the GMT time difference, e.g. YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS-HH:MM, prior to export to FileNet P8. 


The action IsFieldDateWithReformat from the Validations library can be called with a parameter of "s" (no quotation marks) to format a local date/time value to UTC; a GMT offset can be appended to a UTC value with any standard action such as rrSet from the rrunner library.

Example 1: 

Description Field Value (Case A) Field Value (Case B) Data captured 05/31/2012 15:00 05/31/2012 IsFieldDateWithReformat(s) 2012-05-31T15:00:00 2012-05-31T00:00:00 rrSet(@F+-07:00,@F) 2012-05-31T15:00:00-07:00 2012-03-15T00:00:00-07:00 Here the initial field value is first transformed to UTC. The rrSet action is called to append the GMT offset "-07:00" to the field value. 

Example 2: Description Field Value (Case A) Field Value (Case B) Data captured 05/31/2012 15:00 05/31/2012 IsFieldDateWithReformat(s) 2012-05-31T15:00:00 2012-05-31T00:00:00 rrSet(@F+@CHR(43)+07:00,@F) 2012-05-31T15:00:00+07:00 2012-03-15T00:00:00+07:00 Here the initial field value is first transformed to UTC. The rrSet action is called to append the GMT offset "+07:00" to the field value, @CHR is used to avoid conflict with the concatenation operator. 

Note: IBM FileNet Content Engine may have a back end setting for Daylight Savings Time (DST), thus modifying the GMT offset to account for DST may not be necessary. 


Cross reference information Segment Product Component Platform Version Edition Enterprise Content Management FileNet P8 Platform Content Engine Windows, AIX, HP-UX, Linux, Solaris 5.2, 5.1, 5.0, 4.5, 4.2, 4.1

Question: Datetime export to FileNet  Hi there

 

I created an application in Datacap that export to FileNet a Datetime field. In FEM I have a property type of Datetime. I'm using the following to send value to FileNet:

FNP8_SetProperty ("DataEmissao,@DATE(dd/MM/yyyy)+@STRING( )+@TIME(HH:MM),Datetime")

 

The export works fine, but if I check the Datetime property in FEM I can see that the TIME was stored wrong, exactly 3 hours less.

e.g:

Current Datetime is: 19/08/2013 18:10

Value stored in FEM: 19/08/2013 15:10

 

Can someone help me? What I'm doing wrong?

 

Thank's 

Answer: Modify the date/time value into proper GMT/UTC format of YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM[:SS] and then add a time offset to account for the GMT time difference, e.g. YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS-HH:MM, prior to export to FileNet P8. 


The action IsFieldDateWithReformat from the Validations library can be called with a parameter of "s" (no quotation marks) to format a local date/time value to UTC; a GMT offset can be appended to a UTC value with any standard action such as rrSet from the rrunner library.