Locales

Locales are used to set the default language for your content and dynamically load it based on the supporter’s browser preferences. When building pages, you create content for each locale enabled in your account. When no browser preference is available, your default locale will be used.

Setting up locales

To set up or edit existing locales in your account you must be signed in as a “Super Admin” user so you can access the Account Preferences section of Engaging Networks.

Click on Hello > Account settings  > Account Preferences, and then scroll down to Locales to locate the “Locales” settings.

You will need to first set the default locale. This is the language that will load when the preference cannot be identified in the web browser. If you are setting the default locale for the first time and wish to use “English (United States), you still need to go into the settings and select it. A default will not be assigned automatically.

To build pages using multiple locales, check the box to enable multiple locales and select the desired language from the dropdown menu.

Once you have added all of the locales you would like to use, click “save” to save your settings.

Account Data Structure

For each locale that has been enabled in your Engaging Networks account you will also need to create a set of default supporter fields in your account data structure to match your language settings.

NOTE: Even if you only use English (United States) it is still necessary to create a locale-specific set of default supporter fields.

To edit your Account Data Structure, select the item from the left hand navigation.

Before adding a new set of locale-specific form fields to the default supporter record, you should be sure all of your HTML types are set correctly on the existing default supporter record. The default supporter record will always control the HTML type and any changes there will be applied to the locale-specific fields as well.

Click on the plus button next to the “Supporter Field” tab to add a new set of locale supporter fields and select the locale from the list.

Click “yes” to confirm that you wish to copy the contents of the original supporter fields.

After a moment a new tab will appear with your locale-specific default supporter fields. You will need to repeat this step for each locale you have enabled in your account. Eventually, you will see your main supporter fields and a tab for each locale that has been added.

Editing locale-specific supporter form fields

When you create your locale-specific form fields the values from your data structure fields are copied over, meaning you will need to update them to match the default language set by the locale.

Engaging Networks will not automatically translate this for you. All translations must be entered manually by the user.

Each field has the following available settings. Make sure to fill them out since this is also setting up the fields to be used on your forms.

Locale label: This will be the label that appears next to the field on the web page.

Locale values: Once you set your default input type you then need to set the default values to be used for the field. Depending on the input type, a button will appear to edit the default values for use with the field.

The types included are: select, radio, checkbox, split select, triple select, radio with input or select with input.

For more detailed information on adding locale values, read the documentation here on adding default values.

Locale validators: Select from any of the field validators setup under Pages > Alerts and Validators.

Locale help tooltip: Enter a brief description of the value you would like the user to enter into the field.

Preview: As you complete enter the details of your field it will appear in the preview.

Default locale – English (United States)

Additional locale – French (Canada)

On pages

When you edit a text, code or form block, if you look at the top-right you’ll see a new button labelled with the default locale. If you click on that option, it will list the locales you have assigned. Choose the one you want to alter the content for. Initially it will load the same content as the default locale

To test, you can click the preview button to either preview the page as that locale would see it (Preview in browser), or to Load the locale into the editor. In Page Builder, select the magnify glass and then select the locale you’d like to preview or load on the page.

You can also force certain locales to load by appending a URL parameter. For example for French Canadian, the parameter is ?locale=fr-CA.