Localization And Globalization In Cireson Portal

The default is an asterisk (*) which will match all service offerings regardless of language code.  If you want to only display service offerings (and their contained request offerings) of a certain language you can enter a different value in this textbox such as ‘en-US’.  This value is stored in the SettingsItem table in the ServiceManagement database.  Just as with the LanguageCodes setting, the ServiceCatalogLanguageCode can be set either in the SettingsItem table directly  or in version 3.7 or higher you can use the Settings Item view in Admin Settings to change the value.  For a particular Cireson Portal web site instance, you can override the ServiceCatalogLanguageCode stored centrally in the SettingsItem table by creating an appSetting in the web.config for that web site instance.

For example:

Service Catalog Localization and Globalization

In Service Manager some things are localizable such as class names, property names, enumeration values, and much more.  Those items have a unique ID and a display string for each language that Service Manager supports.  Some things in Service Manager are not localizable and only have a single display string which is shown for all languages.  Two examples of these things that are not localizable are service offerings and request offerings.  The service offering category enumeration is localizable though.  Thus, we have a taxonomy like this:

• Service Offering Category – an enumeration which is localizable
• Service Offering – not localizable
• Request Offering – not localizable

When an administrator is creating service offering categories in the Service Manager console the display strings that are created are created in the language that the SCSM console is currently running as.  For example, if a user opens the SCSM console using the English language and creates service offering category enumerations and provides a display string for each of those, whatever the user enters will be stored as the English display string value.  Whatever the user enters will be stored as the display string.  Thus, if the user is running the console in English and enters display string values in Finnish, the Finnish display string values will be stored as the English display string values.  If the administrator wants to create Finnish display string values, the administrator should open the SCSM console in the Finnish language and then create the enumerations and provide the Finnish display strings.  Unlike the service offering category enumerations, because service offerings and request offerings only have a single non-localizable display string value, it does not matter which language the administrator is running the SCSM console as.

Localizing Service Offering Category Enumerations

One common configuration issue that can happen is that the administrator has defined service offering category enumeration values in one language (normally English) and not others OR the administrator is running the SCSM console in English and enters display strings in a different language and doesn’t realize that those display strings are being stored as the English display strings.  When the service catalog data is synchronized to the ServiceManagement DB by the Cireson Cache Builder and then loaded into the Cireson Portal the English display string values exist, but the display strings for the other language do not.  If the user then changes his language code to the language that the display strings do not exist for, the user will see a blank service catalog.  In this situation, the user could look at the F12 developer panel on the Console tab and see an error like this: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property ‘replace’ of null.  This is an indication that the display strings for the service offering enumerations for the language the user chose do not exist.

You can check the display strings for your service offering enumerations and add display strings for other languages by doing the following.

If you already know which management pack your service offering category enumerations are in you can export that management pack from the SCSM console Administration\Management Packs view and skip to step #3.

Install SMLets on a SCSM management server.  Open a PowerShell window and enter Import-Module SMLets.

• Run the following command:  Get-SCSMEnumeration | ?{$_.DisplayName -eq ‘the display name of one of the service offering category enumerations’}.  Example: Get-SCSMEnumeration | ?{$_.DisplayName -eq ‘Datacenter’}
• If you get back just one result then you can run this command to export the management pack that contains that enumeration: (Get-SCSMEnumeration | ?{$_.DisplayName -eq ‘Datacenter’}).GetManagementPack() | Export-SCManagementPack -TargetDirectory C:\Temp
• Now open the management pack in a text editor and search for ‘LanguagePacks’.  In this situation, you will likely see a single LanguagePack with the ID=”ENU”.  If this is the only LanguagePack element then you need to create a new LanguagePack for your desired language.  In this example, we will create one for Finnish.