Fixing the Date Format Issue in Azure Reporting CTP

http://www.clickrex.com/post/21657412179/fixing-the-date-format-issue-in-azure-reporting-ctp

If you are migrating to the Azure Reporting CTP; you may experience the below error:

• The report server has RDLSandboxing enabled and the Label expression for the grouping ‘XX’ contains a reference to a type, namespace, or member ‘Format’ that is not allowed. Change the expression to include only allowed namespaces, types, and members.

The =Format() function is not supported on Azure Reporting currently yet is used quite frequently within SSRS for date formatting (IE: =Format(myDate, “dd-MM-yyyy”)).  In order to get around this you can change the reports to use =FormatDateTime.  To do this:

1. Change each individual report’s localisation properties to point to the correct county (IE: en-GB): this will ensure the date outputted is localised.
2. Change all references to =Format(date, format) to use =FormatDateTime(); like below:

=FormatDateTime(DATE, DateFormat.ShortDate)