Controlling International Preferences

This chapter provides an overview of international preferences and discusses how to:

• Set up language preferences in the PeopleSoft Pure Internet Architecture.

• Apply browser language preferences.

• Set up language preferences for Windows-based PeopleTools.

• Set up locale-based formatting for the PeopleSoft Pure Internet Architecture.

• Set up locale-based formatting for Windows-based PeopleTools.

Understanding International Preferences

The international preference settings control the language in which users view and use the PeopleSoft system, as well as locale formatting conventions for dates, times, and numbers. The PeopleSoft system treats language preferences and local formatting preferences separately.

Language Preferences

You can set up language preferences for your internet browser, for the PeopleSoft Pure Internet Architecture (by session and by user profile), and for the PeopleSoft Windows-based client. Your user, or session language, helps to determine the language of your PeopleSoft interface, such as field and menu labels, as well as the language of the data that you maintain or view during the session. The internet browser language setting helps to determine the language of your PeopleSoft sign-in page in the PeopleSoft Pure Internet Architecture.

Locale-Based Formatting Preferences

Locale-based formatting determines such preferences as date, time, and number formatting. You can set up locale-based formatting preferences at three levels, each of which overrides the one above it:

1. System-wide

2. Locale-specific

3. User-specific

You can set these formatting preferences for both the PeopleSoft Pure Internet Architecture and for the PeopleTools development environment. The preferences you set up for one is independent of those you set up for the other.

Note. Only one date format is supported per selected language.

Setting Up Language Preferences in the PeopleSoft Pure Internet Architecture

This section provides an overview of the session language and discusses how to:

• Choose a session language.

• Change the session language while signed in.

• Change the session language programmatically.

• Determine the session language when the sign-in screen is bypassed.

• Control the user profile language preference.

• Determine the language of help documentation.

See Also

Using Related Language Tables

Understanding the Session Language

In the PeopleSoft Pure Internet Architecture, the session language is the language selected by the user on the sign-in page before entering a user name and password. The session language controls the language in which the user views language-sensitive data and objects in the application for the duration of that session.

If the session language is the database’s base language, then all language-sensitive data, messages, and objects appear in the base language. If the session language is a non-base language, then any language-sensitive data, messages, and objects that have been translated appear in the preferred language; those that have not been translated appear in the base language. For example, if a user’s language code for a particular session is Spanish, PeopleTools attempts to display menus and field labels in Spanish for each page viewed in that session, and if the table from which the data is being fetched has a related language record associated with it, PeopleTools also attempts to fetch the Spanish translations of the data from this table.

Choosing a Session Language

Users choose a session language when they sign in to the system. Users can change their session language during the PeopleSoft session; however, this is typically done only for development or testing purposes. You can also program applications to change session languages, so that your application has its own language selection options.

When the sign-in page initially appears, the page elements on that page appear in the language designated in the user’s browser language settings.

Note. You can prevent a sign-in page from appearing for a language that is not installed in your system by deleting that language from the PSLANGUAGES table using the Maintain Languages page.

To choose a different session language, click one of the available language links before signing in. Clicking the link updates the sign-in screen to reflect the new language choice, and signing in using the updated screen confirms the new session language. Only languages that have been installed and enabled by the system administrator can be used to sign in to the database. If you select a language that has not been enabled in the database to which you are logging in, you receive an error message.

To enable and disable languages for signing in to the database, use the Maintain Languages page. To access this page, select PeopleTools, Utilities, International, Languages.

If you will not be using all languages delivered by the PeopleSoft system, or if you need to add a new language to the system, you can modify the sign-in page to add or remove language links. Remember, the base language of your system must always be available.

See Also

Adding New Languages

Changing the Session Language While Signed In

During development, testing, or debugging, you might want to change the language of your session without signing out of the PeopleSoft system.

Use the International Preferences page to change your session language during a session. Any change made using this page is valid only for the remaining duration of the current session.

To change your session language without signing out:

1. Select PeopleTools, Utilities, International, Preferences.

   The International Preferences page appears.

2. Select a language in the Language Preference field.

3. Click the Save button.

Changes take effect when a new component is loaded.

Changing the Session Language Programmatically

You can change user language preferences programmatically for the remainder of a PeopleSoft Pure Internet Architecture session. This feature is useful if you are building a front end to your PeopleSoft system that does not involve the sign-in screen, and if you want to enable users to change their language preference at any time.

For example, an internet store application might enable anonymous sign-in by customers of the store to browse a catalog, and therefore would not display the sign-in screen. The PeopleCode SetLanguage built-in function could be linked to a PeopleCode program behind a button on a page to enable users to change the language of the interface after they have already been signed in as guest users.

The SetLanguage function temporarily overrides the user's default language preference and the %Language system variable, which evaluates to the language code for the current preferred language.

Calling the SetLanguage function is the same as changing the Language Preference field on the International Preferences page.

The %Language_Base system variable makes it simple to determine the current preferred language and build language-specific functionality in PeopleCode.

If multi-language entry is enabled, %Language_Data returns the current data language selected by the user. Use %Language_Data if your application must know the language any entered application data is stored as in the component's related language records.

See Also

SetLanguage

%Language

%Language_Base

%Language_User

Determining the Session Language When the Sign-in Page is Bypassed

The PeopleSoft system offers the following ways to sign in to a PeopleSoft session without seeing the sign-in page:

• Direct access.

  You can configure the web server to enable users to access the PeopleSoft system without having to sign in. In these cases, users access the system using a predetermined user ID.

  The language preference for users who access the system this way is determined by the user profile language preference for that user ID.

• When bypassing the sign-in page, you can override the user profile language preference by explicitly setting the language code within a direct query string using the parameter &languageCd=target_language.

• Single sign-in.

  You need to select a language preference only once during the single sign-in.

  All subsequent PeopleSoft sessions that are controlled by the single sign-in use the same language preference.

See Also

Implementing Single Signon

Controlling the User Profile Language Preference

In addition to the session language preference that is selected at sign-in time and is valid for the current session only, the PeopleSoft Pure Internet Architecture also maintains a language preference on each user’s profile. This language preference is used to determine the user’s preferred language when that user is not signed into the PeopleSoft system. For example, when PeopleSoft Process Scheduler runs a Structured Query Report (SQR) program, or if the workflow system sends an email to the user, the user language preference is used.

In these cases, the user might not be signed in to the PeopleSoft system, or another user might have initiated the transaction, so there is no session language that can be used. For example, a manager might be sent an email by the workflow system requesting approval for a purchase requisition.

To set the language preference for a user, use the User Profiles page. To change your own language preference, use the simplified General Profile Information page.

To set the user profile language preference for another user:

1. Select PeopleTools, Security, User Profiles, User Profiles.

   The User Profile search page appears.

2. Use the standard search method to choose a user ID, and click the Search button.

   The User Profiles - General page appears.

3. From the Language Code dropdown list box, select a language.

4. Click the Save button.

To set your user profile language preference:

1. From the menu pagelet, select My System Profile.

   The General Profile Information page appears.

2. In the Personalization section, choose a language in the My preferred language for reports and email is drop-down list box.

3. Click the Save button.

See Also

Working With Language-Sensitive Application Data

Determining the Language of Help Documentation

If a user accesses a document from a PeopleSoft application by clicking Help in a PeopleSoft page or by pressing the F1 key from Application Designer, the system opens the version of the document that corresponds to the session language. If the system does not find a version of the documentation in the appropriate language, it brings up the English documentation, if available.

Applying Browser Language Preferences

This section provides an overview of browser language preferences and discusses how to:

• Set browser language preferences.

• Use browser language settings to determine the sign-in language.

Understanding Browser Language Preferences

Web browsers enable users to specify a list of preferred languages for web content. PeopleTools uses the first language listed in the browser's preferred language list to determine the default language of the PeopleSoft sign-in page. If the user’s preferred language is not available, the default sign-in page is displayed in U.S. English (en-US).

Setting Browser Language Preferences

In Microsoft Internet Explorer, the preferred language list is located in the Language Preference dialog box. You can add new languages using the Add dialog box.

The representation of language codes in the browser’s preferred language list uses two- to five-character ISO standard locale codes made up of a language and country portion. For example, es represents Spanish and ar represents Argentina. A two-letter code represents only a language, without reference to a specific country or territory.

Other browsers have a similar dialog box that enables you to create an ordered list of language preferences.

Using Browser Language Settings to Determine the Sign-in Language

For PeopleTools to display the sign-in page in the user’s preferred language as determined from browser settings, the language codes used by the browser are mapped to three-letter PeopleSoft language codes. The PeopleSoft system reads the PSLANGUAGES table to perform this mapping.

As delivered, the PeopleSoft system includes the following mappings:

The two-part ISO locale provides flexibility when languages vary from country to country. For example, the ISO code for French is fr. French is spoken in several countries, each with its own two-character country code, including France (FR), Belgium (BE), Canada (CA), and Switzerland (CH). The full locale code consists of a lowercase language code, an underscore, and an uppercase country code. So the code for Canadian French is fr_CA.

In many cases, the country distinction between languages is not relevant, or the PeopleSoft system does not deliver a country-specific translation. In these cases, many individual ISO locale codes may be mapped to a single PeopleSoft language code. For example, the PeopleSoft system delivers a Canadian French translation with the PeopleSoft language code of CFR. Therefore, the ISO locale of fr_CA is mapped to the PeopleSoft language code of CFR. However, the PeopleSoft system does not provide a Belgian French or Swiss French translation, so the fr_BE and fr_CH ISO locales fall back to fr, and are both mapped to the FRA PeopleSoft language code.

Setting Up Language Preferences for Microsoft Windows-Based PeopleTools

This section provides an overview of language preferences in PeopleTools for Microsoft Windows and discusses how to control PeopleSoft Configuration Manager language settings.

Understanding Language Preferences for Microsoft Windows-Based PeopleTools

In the Microsoft Windows-based PeopleTools such as Application Designer, the language setting within PeopleSoft Configuration Manager controls the language in which the user views almost all language-sensitive data and objects in the application.

Just like in the PeopleSoft Pure Internet Architecture, if the language selected in PeopleSoft Configuration Manager is the base language, then all language-sensitive data, messages, and objects appear in the base language. If the language in PeopleSoft Configuration Manager is a non-base language, then any language-sensitive data, messages, and objects that have been translated appear to the user in the preferred language; those that have not been translated appear in the base language.

See Also

Using Related Language Tables

Controlling PeopleSoft Configuration Manager Language Settings

The language setting in PeopleSoft Configuration Manager is maintained on each PeopleTools development environment workstation. The setting determines the language in which the user views and maintains almost all language-sensitive data and objects in the Microsoft Windows-based PeopleTools.

The following graphic shows PeopleSoft Configuration Manager with the Language field set to ESP-Spanish.

To set the PeopleSoft Configuration Manager language:

1. Start PeopleSoft Configuration Manager.

2. Select the Display tab.

3. Select a language in the Language field.

4. Click OK.

Setting Up Locale-Based Formatting for the PeopleSoft Pure Internet Architecture

This section provides an overview of locale-based formatting and discusses how to:

• Define user-specific formatting.

• Define locales for locale-specific formatting.

• Define locale-specific formatting.

• Apply system-wide default formatting.

See Also

Controlling Currency Display Format

Managing PeopleSoft Personalizations

Understanding Locale-Based Formatting

The locale-based personalization architecture in the PeopleSoft Pure Internet Architecture provides a flexible framework for formatting locale-sensitive data. Three levels of personalization settings drive the formatting of locale-based data in the PeopleSoft Pure Internet Architecture:

• User-specific (My Personalizations page).

• Locale-specific (from the browser).

• System-wide.

These levels ensure that each user can specify how to format locale-based data, such as numbers, dates and times, while maintaining an intelligent set of default formats for users who don’t set specific preferences.

When determining how to format these types of data, PeopleTools checks for formatting preferences at each of these levels in the order of user-specific, locale-specific, and finally system-wide.

For example, a first-time user may sign in to the PeopleSoft Pure Internet Architecture as a French user and having fr set in the browser as the preferred language. Because the user is a first-time user of the system, PeopleTools does not have any personalization information specific to that user. Next, PeopleTools checks the personalizations tables to see if a locale-specific formatting setting exists for the browser preference code of fr. If locale-specific settings for fr users are found, the system formats all numbers, dates, and times for that session using the settings defined by the system administrator for French users.

However, it is possible that the user, even though signed in using the French language and having fr set as the browser preferred language, might prefer another type of formatting for number separators. To register a user-specific preference, the user opens the My Personalizations - Personalizations page, accesses personalization options for regional settings, and overrides the Digit Group Separator field value. Whenever that user accesses the PeopleSoft Pure Internet Architecture, the decimal separator is that custom value, regardless of session language and browser language preference. All other preferences are read from the locale-specific personalizations mapped to the browser settings.

If a user signs in to the PeopleSoft Pure Internet Architecture using a language for which locale-specific personalizations have not been set up by the system administrator, PeopleTools uses system-wide defaults.

When running a batch program such as an Application Engine program, the browser locale defaults are not available, so there are only two levels of settings: user preferences and system defaults. Therefore, if the user running the Application Engine program has their formatting preferences set (from My Personalizations), then the output of that program will be consistent with other outputs for that user.

Using the personalizations system in PeopleTools, the system administrator can restrict which personalization options are driven by a locale and which can be overridden. In certain organizations where a corporate-wide policy exists for formatting numbers, dates, or times, the system administrator might disable the locale sensitivity or user overrides for locale-sensitive data formats. In this case, the system-wide defaults take effect for each personalization option disabled by the system administrator.

Note. If user-specific formatting is not set, locale-specific formatting will be used, even if the Locale Based check box on the Define Personalizations page is not selected. If locale-specific formatting is not set, system-wide formatting defined on the Define Personalizations page is used.

Pages Used to Set Up PeopleSoft Pure Internet Architecture Locale-Based Formatting

Defining User-Specific, Locale-Based Formatting

Access the Personalizations (Option Category: Regional Settings) page (My Personalizations. Click the Personalize Option button for Regional Settings).

Use this page to specify how PeopleTools should format each field that contains numbers, dates, and times. Each individual formatting element can be overridden on a user-by-user basis.

To override any of these values, enter the appropriate value or select one from the drop-down list box in the Override Value column. For example, if you prefer to use a dash ( - ) instead of a slash ( / ) to separate the components of dates, enter a dash character in the Override Value column for the Date Separator personalization option. Values maintained here are specific to your user ID.

If you leave any of these override values blank, they will be evaluated next time you sign in based on your browser language preference, and if locale-specific preferences aren’t found for your language, they are automatically populated from the system-wide values, as shown in the Default Value column on this page.

Note. If auto-recognize Gregorian dates is set to Yes (the default) and the calendar is set to a non-Gregorian calendar, any dates entered in date fields that fall in the range of the Gregorian calendar will be assumed to be Gregorian and will be converted to the specified calendar's dates.

See Also

Working with the My Personalizations Interface

Understanding Regional Settings

Defining Locales for Locale-Specific Formatting

Access the Locale Definition page (PeopleTools, Personalization, Locales).

Use this page to add locales that can have defaults specified on the Locale Defaults page. These locales are different from PeopleSoft language codes; they typically contain both language and country information. When formatting data fields, both these elements are typically needed, given that many languages are spoken in different countries, with each country often following different formatting conventions. Having only information on the user’s language is not sufficient to determine a default level of locale-sensitive data formatting.

For example, English is spoken in several countries that differ on date formatting. In the U.S., dates are typically formatted with the month first, whereas in the United Kingdom, they are typically formatted with the day first.

The session language code cannot be used to determine the specific locale for a session, due to its lack of country information. Instead, the browser’s language preference list is read, and the top (the most preferred) locale in that list is used to look up locale-specific formats in the Personalizations Locale Definitions page. Therefore, you should ensure that each browser locale used by your system’s users appears in the Locale Definition page.

Defining Locale-Specific Formatting

Access the Locale Defaults page (PeopleTools, Personalization, Locale Defaults).

Use this page to assign default values for personalization options based on locale code.

To more easily view defaults for a particular locale, click the Locale Code column heading to sort the data on this page by the locale code.

Note. For some international locales, a space character is used as a digit group separator (for example, thousands). However, the PeopleSoft Pure Internet Architecture interprets a single space in a field as a null value. To use the space character as a digit group separator, define the override value as a space between single quotation marks. This personalization can be defined at the system-wide, locale-default, or individual user level. This special treatment of the space character currently only takes effect for the digit group separator user option.

Applying System-Wide Default Formatting

System-wide formatting is applied for the session only if a particular personalization option cannot be found that is specific to the user or the browser’s locale. System-wide defaults are defined using the Define Personalizations page. To apply system-wide default formatting, select PeopleTools, Personalization, Personalization Options, and click the Format tab.

See Also

Managing PeopleSoft Personalizations

Setting Up Locale-Based Formatting for Microsoft Windows-based PeopleTools

The Microsoft Windows Regional Options dialog box (accessed through the Microsoft Windows control panel) enables you to choose the format for the display of numbers, dates, times, and currencies while operating in Application Designer and other Microsoft Windows components of PeopleTools.

Note. Regional Options that you set up in Microsoft Windows do not affect the display or maintenance of data in the PeopleSoft Pure Internet Architecture.

Currency formatting is controlled by PeopleTools and is independent of the Regional Options dialog box.

See Also

Controlling Currency Display Format