Business Case: All ServiceNow Users should be presented with the Login Page in their native language

Why this article: All implementations i have found so far work with client side scripting and page reloads. This is a really bad user experience.

Why use the method shown in this article: We simply set the guest-User language server side and do this by parsing the 'Accept-Language' header which the browser sends. This is done all known and relevant browsers (Source: mdn).

How this method works: There are two entry points to get to the login page: A) Access via "internal" link (e.g. /incident_list.do)

B) Access via portal link (e.g. /sp?id=approvals)

Setting the language for A) is easy, it only requires a small modification to the SPEntryPage Script Include (and if not already in use, requires a certain System Property to be set). Modifying this Script Include is supported and recommended by ServiceNow (in short: Best Practice).

Setting the language for B) is a little bit more difficult and might need more modifications, as every portal theme in-use has to be modified. In detail, we are going to replace the header used by the theme and will execute the "set-language" function *before* any other code is executed.

Scoped App which includes all necessary scripts and has a built-in check for all required settings to implement this feature:

https://github.com/kr4uzi/ServiceNow-Automatic-Login-Language.git

A) (Internal) modification:

1.) Make sure that the sys_properties glide.entry.page.script is set to new SPEntryPage().getLoginURL();
2.) Modify the SPEntryPage Script Include like this:

...
    getLoginURL: function() {
        var user = gs.getUser();
        if (user.getName() == 'guest') {
            var acceptLanguage = GlideTransaction.get().getRequest().getHeader("Accept-Language");
            if (acceptLanguage) {
                var isoLanguage = acceptLanguage.substring(0, 2);
                var choiceGr = new GlideRecord('sys_choice');
                choiceGr.addEncodedQuery('name=sys_user^element=preferred_language');
                choiceGr.addQuery('language', isoLanguage);
                choiceGr.setLimit(1);
                choiceGr.query();
                if (choiceGr.hasNext()) {
                    user.setPreference("user.language", isoLanguage);
                    user.savePreferences();
                }
            }
        }
...

B) (External) modification:1.) Identify the used theme:a) Navigate to the Portal Record (sp_portal.list)b) Open the Theme Record

c) Open the Header Record and save the Sys Id of it

2.) Create a new Header Widget (sp_header_footer.do)

a) Switch the the Global Scope, or any global scoped App

b) Save the record with the following values (note: now you need the Sys Id of the OOTB Header Record):

Body HTML Template:

<sp-widget widget="data.widget" />

Server script:

(function() {
    var user = gs.getUser();
    if (user.getName() == 'guest') {
        var acceptLanguage = GlideTransaction.get().getRequest().getHeader("Accept-Language");
        if (acceptLanguage) {
            var isoLanguage = acceptLanguage.substring(0, 2);
            var choiceGr = new GlideRecord('sys_choice');
            choiceGr.addQuery('name', 'sys_user');
            choiceGr.addQuery('element', 'preferred_language');
            choiceGr.addQuery('language', isoLanguage);
            choiceGr.setLimit(1);
            choiceGr.query();
            if (choiceGr.hasNext()) {
                user.setPreference("user.language", isoLanguage);
                user.savePreferences();
            }
        }
    }

    data.widget = $sp.getWidget('<Sys ID of the OOTB Header Widget>', options);
})();

3.) Modify the Theme Record from Step 1)a) Replace the Header with the newly created Header Widget in Step 2)

b) Save the Record

4.) Done