How to customize non-customizable elements in customer portal

[Anna Shestakova]

In customer portal I see the phrase "What do you need help with?" and I want to delete/edit it. But can`t find the way to do this. I`ve tried to find this phrase in java classes, .jsp .vm .config files, but have no success. In which way could I fix it?

[Andy Heinzer]

Hi Anna,

I understand that you are using Jira Service Desk server and want to be able to change that text that appears on the customer portal of "What do you need help with?".  This is something that can be done through a language pack.  I will try to document my own experiences with this.  In my own testing, I was using Jira 8.10.0 with Jira Service Desk 4.10.0.

1. First try going to Install a custom language pack for Jira Server.  It has the overall steps you need to follow to make this work.
2. For my example, I picked out the Spanish (Mexico) language pack specifically for Jira Service Desk. https://packages.atlassian.com/maven/com/atlassian/translations/jira-service-desk-language-pack-es_MX/3.9.0.m0124-v2r243-2017-10-26/  (specifically I downloaded the .jar file found in that link)
3. I renamed that .jar file into a .zip file locally, and then extracted those files to a temp directory. 
4. Inside that directory find the file called /i18n/sd-18n_es_MX.properties  (that filename will be slightly different for different languages, but it has a similar format)
5. I then found that this old file does not have the element name within it to be translated yet. Sorry about that, but in this case I had to add a key to the file

6. sd.customerview.smart.portal.search.label=What does the fox say?

7. Save that file
8. Then select only the files in that temp folder (not the folder itself) and compress these into a new zip file. 
9. I then renamed that new .zip to use a .jar extension.
10. From there go back to Jira and go into the Manage Apps (Or the URL of $yourJiraBaseURL/plugins/servlet/upm ) and then click on the Upload App link found in Jira Server in order to select that .jar file and have it uploaded to Jira. 

From that point, I had to actually change the language pack to use Español (MX) for my user profile in Jira Service Desk.  As soon as did that, I saw this text instead now says "What does the fox say?".  Which I think is a better question to be asking anyways.

Try these steps and let me know if you run into any problems following these steps.

Andy