SSRS subscription - change the date format (@ExecutionTime) on the subject line

Question

Problem: The default subject line in an SSRS subscription email uses the @ExecutionTime pre-defined variable and at runtime replaces the same with a datetime in mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss format. Since, we have deployed our product for an Indian client, we would like the date format in dd/mm/yyyy format.

Most of the posts on the internet have suggested using data-driven report subscription to construct a custom email subject. But as per SQL Server documentation, this feature is available in Enterprise and BI editions only.

Other attempts to use =Parameters!ExecutionDateTime or =FORMAT(@ExecutionTime,"dd-MMM-yyyy") or =format(Globals!ExecutionTime , "MMM yyyy") have failed.

Two days of futile attempts in solving this. Will continue looking, and hope the SO community can help.

Answer 1

In addition to the answer by Tushar Sood, I would like to add that: the language can be made to work for subscriptions added after changing the language settings.

This can be achieved by doing the following steps in the reporting database:

1. Go to the SQL server which is hosting your Reporting Services
2. Open the SQL Server Management studio and go to a database called "ReportServer"
3. Expand database "Reportserver"
4. Expand Tables
5. Open the table called "dbo.Subscriptions" in Edit Mode...You will see a column called "Locale"

For some reports which is showing "M/d/yyyy" format the locale will be set to value "en-US".

6. Change the value to "en-GB"

Now all your reports (including old ones) using @ExecutionTime will start showing date time in "en-GB" format.

That's it... Happy Reporting!!!