SSRS date sorting

Question

I have a date that I want to show as Month then Year like 'Jan 05'. I have used the following SQL datename(month,eFolder.eCreationTime) + ' ' + datename(year,eFolder.eCreationTime) as "MonthYear" in my query.

However on SSRS I am finding it difficult to sort this in a column grouping as its showing in Alphabetical order. Is there anyway to sort this or does the problem lie with the SQL mentioned above as its concatenating it I have tried sorting at group level and on the textbox with no success.

Thank you in advance

This is how the sql looks like at the minute

SELECT
case when SUBSTRING(eFolder.eFolderName,1,2) = 'IM' then 'Incidents' 
     when SUBSTRING(eFolder.eFolderName,1,2) = 'RF' then 'Requests'
     else null end "Request or Incident", 
  count(eFolder.eFolderName) as "Log No",
  eUser2.eDistinguishedName,
    datename(month,eFolder.eCreationTime) + ' ' + datename(year,eFolder.eCreationTime)  as "Month"

FROM
  eUser  eUser2 RIGHT OUTER JOIN prcIncidentManagement ON (eUser2.eUserName=prcIncidentManagement.AssignedTo)
   INNER JOIN eFolder ON (prcIncidentManagement.EFOLDERID=eFolder.eFolderID)



group by 

case when SUBSTRING(eFolder.eFolderName,1,2) = 'IM' then 'Incidents' 
     when SUBSTRING(eFolder.eFolderName,1,2) = 'RF' then 'Requests'
     else null end , 
  eUser2.eDistinguishedName,
   datename(month,eFolder.eCreationTime) + ' ' + datename(year,eFolder.eCreationTime) 

Answer 1

Don't do the string conversion in SQL. Return the data as a date value and do the string formatting in SSRS.

One of many reasons why dates should not be stored (or retrieved) as text.

The reason I grouped it to months is to reduce the amount of lines and time it takes.

You can still group it by month without converting it to a string. Just return a date that represents that month (eg 2015-10-01 )

Other options:

• Groups by the Year and Month as numbers an include them in your results and turn that into a date in SSRS
• Parse the string to a date in SSRS (using CDate or DateTime.ParseExact() )