Be Ready for May 1st 2019 Japanese Calendar Era Change

On May 1, 2019, a new Japan era will begin. This will be the first transition from one era to another in the history of .NET, and the first change of eras in the Japanese calendar since January 1989.

Generally, the industry is expecting a one-month lead time between the announcement of the new era name and its start.

In Japan, most modern engineering systems use the Gregorian calendar. However, official governmental documents, such as drivers’ licenses, use the Japanese calendar; and therefore, it’s important to ensure your applications that support this calendar are updated.

A narrow window for implementing the new era name and calendar support means that technology vendors and application developers need to prepare for this important update by testing with placeholders.

To ensure your Dynamics solutions affected by this change will still work with the new era, please familiarize yourself with the below resources and begin testing your solutions.

Updates for May 2019 Japan Era Change

Handling a new era in the Japanese calendar in .NET

Using the registry to test the new Japanese Era on Windows

CALL TO ACTION:

Our partners’ engineering teams should ensure their applications using the JapaneseCalendar or the JapaneseLunisolarCalendar will be ready to support the new Japanese era by May 1, 2019.

Any product or service that provides the ability to select OR interact with the Japanese Calendar will likely require some degree of engineering effort.

Even products and services that rely on the date and calendar settings provided by platforms, (i.e., Windows, .Net, iOS and Android globalization platforms, etc.) will require validation testing at a minimum.

Above all, we recommend that all engineering teams:

• Determine whether their applications are affected by the Japanese era change. All applications that use the JapaneseCalendar and the JapaneseLunisolarCalendar classes may be affected.
• Test their applications to determine whether they can handle all dates, and particularly dates that exceed the range of the current Japanese calendar era.

You must determine what channels to use for providing this update to your customers before May 1, 2019.

Thanks in advance to making your Dynamics applications ready for the next Japanese era!