Language selection without a user account

[Dirk Ronsmans]

For a public servicedesk project we opened up the JSD portal to allow anonymous submission of an issue.

This portal however would need to be multilingual as the users raising these requests are not all native English speakers.

We've added the required languages through the "Language Support" menu but can not find a way to force a user to certain language.

From what I gather the language could be taken from the browser setting but we could like to find a way where the customer can choose the language they are viewing the portal in (before any login occurs) or give the customer the possibility to go through a specific URL that immediatly displays the correct portal language.

Anybody got any idea? Creating an account and then submitting the issue is not an option.

[Angélica Luz]

Hello Dirk,

Thank you for your question.

On Service Desk, the login page language is based on the system's default language. 

It was actually reported as a bug because the system language overrides the browser language and the language set by the customer. 

• Jira system language overrides default support language and browser language

And also, there is a feature request:

• Respect the browser's default language setting before log in on the customer portal

So, if you change the system language (Cog icon > System > General configuration > Default language) to Spanish, German, French, for example, customers will see the login page with one of those languages, despite their browser language is in English. 

It will also override some information in the portal if customers select to detect the browser language. Here is an example where the system language is Spanish and my browser is in Portuguese:

Projects and some details are in English and some details shows in Spanish. 

With all this said, I'm afraid that it's not possible to do what you need due to the bug because the expected behavior would be the login page to show as the browser language. 

If you have any other questions regarding this matter, please let us know.

Regards,
Angélica

[Dirk Ronsmans]

Hi @Angélica Luz

Thanks for the extensive explanation.

While having both the system default language and (when the bug is solved) also the browser language dictate the portal language is already great, what I'm really looking for is the ability of the user to manually select the language they want to view on the portal (out of the languages we translated of course)

OR/AND

the ability to force a user to a specific language based on a parameter in the url.

Normally I would tell them to change their profile language but these users will never log in as our portal will be fully public.

Seems to be what was mentioned in JRACLOUD-12847 which was sadly resolved as "won't do" about 5y ago.

Perhaps a chance to revisit this/launch a new suggestion?

[Angélica Luz]

Hi @Dirk Ronsmans,

There are some similar feature requests that suggest the same option we have in our portal where customers can select the language before creating a request.

• Ability to customize Customer Portal Form same as Contact Support page
• Setting Customers Language Improvement

Regarding the URL, I didn't find any feature or workaround for that. 

[Dirk Ronsmans]

Hi @Angélica Luz

Something like the contact page would indeed be great! I'll vote and watch those requests and hope for the best :)

[Dirk Ronsmans]

Hi @Angélica Luz

As a follow up, I don't know if something changed on Cloud but currently my browser language is being respected when I go to my anonymous customer portal.

Changing my browser language from English to Dutch to French shows me a translated anonymous portal.

Let's hope this is not a temporary fluke!