Recommendations for using multiple languages

In this article we make some recommendations about using multilingual features in Atlas. Following this advice should give the best experience for your users.

Content

We recommend guiding users to create content in the same language as the Information Centre where it is stored, so if you have both English and French language sites it will be less confusing to users if the content stored in those sites uses the same language as the interface.

Regardless of where the content is created and stored, users will be able to create content that can be seen in sites using different languages, so you need to be aware of the behaviour of the system in these scenarios.

Microsoft provides a translation feature for Communications workspaces which allows manual translations to be provided for Pages so users will automatically be shown translated versions of content for their language if available. You can learn more from this article: Enable Translations for News and Pages in a Communications Workspace

Permissions

By default we recommend that users only have permissions to create and consume content in their native language. Organisations working in this way can have one Communications Centre for each language – each with completely separate content – and users will not need to be aware that Information Centres in other languages exist. Clicking their system logo in the Atlas header will always take them to the Communications Centre they have access to.

However we expect that there will be many scenarios where at least some of the content is visible to users for whom it is not in their native language, for example if the French office should be able to see Global Event pages which may be written in English. In this case, when navigating to content in other Information Centres the system logo in the Atlas header will take the user to the homepage of the Information Centre containing that content which may not be in their native language.

Due to the above behaviour you should ensure that if users have access to content in other Information Centres, they also have access to the relevant homepage.

Navigation

To ensure users are able to navigate easily through the system we would recommend the following steps be applied either by your IT function or by individuals:

• Set browser homepages to the Atlas homepage in the correct language for that user
• Provide education regarding the content you expect your users to consume
• Provide links in the Global Navigation to the homepage in each language. This menu is security trimmed so users will only see these links if they can access them.