How does SharePoint decide in which language it sends an alert to the user?

Question

Hi all,

I would like to know how SharePoint decides in which language it sends an alert to the user and how it can be controlled. Since the initial email, that informs the user that he or she successfully created an alert on the list, is send in the language that was set in the UI, when the alert was created. But the following emails are send in the installation language. Is this the intended behaviour? Doe this depend on the timer job, who is executing the alert transmission?

Thanks

Answer 1

Hi Luca,

Thank you for your question.
I am trying to involve someone familiar with this topic to further look at this issue.

Thanks,
Lhan Han

Answer 2

Hello Luca,

Thank you for your post . We do see some references and a few other posts that talk about the same issue. I have tested this behavior with build version 14.0.6106.5000 (June 2011 Uber CU) – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2536601, everything works as expected.

The initial subscription email and subsequent alert emails are received in expected language as we subscribed.

Does this depend on the timer job ?  No

Who is executing the alert transmission?

For each alert subscription the weblanguage would be stored while subscribing (the current browsing language), which decides the template language while generating alert emails. When we subscribe alert, there is a new entry get added to ImmedSubscriptions table, which maintains the selected language.

You can run below query to find the same.

       select WebLanguage,AlertTitle,WebTitle,ListTitle from ImmedSubscriptions nolock

1033 - English

1036 - French

1031 - Germen  ...  so on ...

Thanks..

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Regards,
Manas Biswas
Microsoft Online Community Support


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Answer 3

Hello Manas,

thank you very much for your detailed explanation. So it seems that in my case SharePoint does not recognize the current selected language while creating the alert. The version I'm working on is 14.0.6114.5000.

For example when the users currently selected UI language is German and the user creates an alert, the new entry in the ImmedSubscriptions table contains the value '1033' in the WebLanguage column.

Is there a supported way of changing an alerts language setting (i.e. via OM)?

Regards,
Luca

Answer 4

Hello Luca,

WebLanguage column in ImmedSubscriptions table is populated by Language ID of the SharePoint Site and not via an individual alert, hence you don't see a way to set it at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms462957. And as you may already know, It is not supported way to modify the value in DB tables http://support.microsoft.com/kb/841057.
If needed, you could try creating a new web / site collection in a different language and subscribe to alert and test the behavior and confirm the above.

If you need more in-depth level of support, please visit the below link to see the various paid support options that are available to better meet your needs: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?id=fh;en-us;offerprophone. If you are a MSDN / TechNet subscriber, you can also contact our support by using your free support incidents.
However, other members of the community may still have encountered the issue you're seeing, and have a solution to offer!

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Please remember to click 'Mark as Answer' on the post that helps you or click 'Unmark as Answer' if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Regards,
Nishant Shah
Microsoft Online Community Support