Displaying Addresses in a Format Familiar to Users

In Aptify, an administrator can link each user to a culture. As described in Linking Users to Cultures, this culture assignment determines the captions and labels the user sees while navigating the Aptify Desktop client. It also determines the layout of the address and phone fields that the user sees on forms like Persons and Companies.

Aptify provides a mechanism to localize address and phone formats using Form Template technology, which should streamline data entry since users can enter information in a format to which they are accustomed. Each culture-specific address and phone layout design can have its own form template in Aptify. These form templates are set up so that the particular address fields, such as City, State, and Postal Code, map to the user's expected layout.

For example, a user in France would enter information in a format that is customary to that country (where the Postal Code appears before the City), even when entering addresses in other countries, like the United States and Japan. As shown in the examples below, a French user sees both the address in France (on the left) and the address in the United States (on the right) in the French format.

Note that Aptify provides address forms for the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, and phone number forms for the United States, and United Kingdom. The French layout shown below was specifically designed for this example and is not included with Aptify (but an administrator or developer can easily create one using Aptify's Form Template and Visual Designer technology; see Administering Form Templates for details).

Similarly, users in other countries would see the addresses in their usual and customary layout, thereby making the data entry and review processes intuitive. So, when a user in the United States reviews address information for a company entered by a user in France, the address will appear in the U.S. format for that user. See the figures below for examples of how the same addresses shown in the previous figures appear to a U.S.based user.