Creating localized notifications for IBM Lotus Quickr 8.5.x for Domino 

Introduction

Among the new and exciting functionality available in Lotus Quickr 8.5.1 is the ability for users to view Lotus Quickr in their local language, regardless of the fact that the server is English. When a user opens Lotus Quickr in their Web browser, the server provides it to the user in the language of their Microsoft® Windows® regional settings.

Because of the support for multiple languages, however, the default language is English when notifications are sent to users. This document describes how to customize Quickr notifications so that the system administrator can localize the notification language.

It is meant to be a simpler version of the product documentation topic, “Quickr Domino 8.5 Enablement Material - Notifications Overview Configuration & Customization.”

Localizing your notifications

For this example let's create a place called “Place” with three users, User1, User2 and User3. Then we add User3 to the Place and enable to option, “Send a invitation to any new users who have email” (see figure 1).

Figure 1. Add Members window



User3 will now receive an email from the Place to say they have been added as a member of this place (see figure 2). Note that this notification is always in English.

Figure 2. Notification email in English


The default English notification templates are contained in the following directory on your Lotus Quickr server:

Domino\data\domino\quickplace\notifications

The templates are in both HTML and plain text format, and can be easily modified (make sure to back up this directory before making any changes).

Let's now change the Add Member notification to French. To do this we need to edit three files:

Domino\data\domino\quickplace\notifications\add_member.html
Domino\data\domino\quickplace\notifications\add_member.txt
Domino\data\domino\quickplace\notifications\add_member_subject.txt

1. If you open the add_member.html file in a browser, you will see what's shown in figure 3.

Figure 3. The add_member.html in a browser


2. To localize this file, open add_member.html using Notepad and edit the header“has added you as a member of place” as follows:

English:


   <table cellpadding="6" width="98%" dir="LTR" ID="Table1"><tr><td>

	  <h1>{1} has added you as a member of place "<a href="{place_link}">{placeTitle}</a>".</h1>


French:


   <table cellpadding="6" width="98%" dir="LTR" ID="Table1"><tr><td>

	  <h1>{1} vous a ajouté en tant que membre de place "<a href="{place_link}">{placeTitle}</a>".</h1>


So, “Has added you as a member of place” is now “Vous a ajouté en tant que membre de place”.

3. You must also localize “This is a notification sent from” before saving the add_member.html file, as follows:

This is a notification sent from
Cet avis est envoyé de la part de

4. The next two files to localize are text files, so open each one and make the following changes:

add_member.txt:
To examine, please use the enclosed link.
Pour vérifier veulliez utiliser le lien ci-joint

add_member_subject.txt:
You are now a member of a place on
Vous êtes maintenant membre d'un place sur

5. After making the changes to all three files, restart the server for the changes to take effect.

Testing your changes

To test that the changes were successful, we remove User3 from the Place and re-add this user with the notification box checked. When User3 checks their email, they will see the new notification shown in figure 4.

Figure 4. New notification


Notice the subject and content of the notification are now in French, all except for the “Open in browser” link. We can change this using the Notifications section of the QPConfig.xml as folllows:

1. Add the following section in red color to file Domino\data\domino\quickplace\notifications\create_place.html, and then change “Open in browser” to “Ouvrir dans le navigateur””. If you want to translate this string in other template files, please do as we did in create_place.html.



2. Restart the server and re-add User3 with notification enabled. The result: The notification is all in French (see figure 5).

Figure 5. All French notification



NOTE: The above translations are for demonstration purposes only and have not been translated by a professional. Administrators can add whatever text they feel is appropriate.

==Known issue on French Language version=
It has been reported that, if an email for new member notification is read on a French Language version of XP Pro SP3, it will show a special character in the Subject line, before the first letter in the subject line.

You can avoid the issue by doing the following:

1. Use Notepad to open the notification templates in <domino>\data\domino\quickplace\notifications, such as add_member_subject.txt.
2. Select File --- Save As, and change "encoding" into "UTF-8".
3. Save the file without changing its name.
4. Restart Quickr Domino

To verify, log on to a Quickr place, and add a member with sending notification. The special character should not be seen in the Subject.

Resources

Lotus Quickr for Domino wiki product documentation:
Quickr Domino 8.5 Enablement Material - Notifications Overview Configuration & Customization.

Lotus Quickr for Domino product page:
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/quickr/domino/

Lotus Quikr Forum:
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/quickplace.nsf?OpenDatabase

About the author

John Rice is a second-level Senior Software Engineer with over four years experience supporting IBM Lotus applications. For the past two years John's main role has been troubleshooting Lotus Quickr, Lotus Traveler and Lotus Domino Core issues while significantly contributing to IBM's Intellectual property portfolio. He can be reached at RICEJ@ie.ibm.com.