Preferred Language - Preferred Language is a property that you can set for each EmpowerID Person to link that person to a specific locale and the Localized Entries of any Localized Text Entries available for that locale. If this property is not set to a specific locale, the person will see the default Localized Text Entry.
Visually, the relationship between these objects can be represented in the following way:

Preferred languages can be set for each EmpowerID Person via one of the following workflows:
- CreatePersonSimple - Running this workflow allows you to set the Preferred Language for a user when creating their EmpowerID Person object.
- CreatePersonAndAccount - Running this workflow allows you to set the Preferred Language for a user when creating both their EmpowerID Person object and external directory user account.
- EditPersonDemographics - Running this workflow allows you to set the Preferred Language for an existing EmpowerID Person object.
- PersonEdit - Running this workflow allows you to set the Preferred Language for an existing EmpowerID Person object.
Running one of the above workflows opens a form with a
Preferred Language drop-down populated with the
Display Names of the locales that exist in the Collection of Locales and Languages in Configuration Manager ("French" is the Display Name for the "fr-FR" locale). The image below shows the Preferred Language drop-down in the Edit Person form of the PersonEdit workflow Delegated users can set this property for any EmpowerID Person. Once the Preferred Language is set for an EmpowerID Person, that person will see all EmpowerID user interface elements that have Localized Entries with matching locales.
The Localized Entries applied to the EmpowerID Login screen for the EmpowerID Web application is set by the language settings applied to the browser on the local machine. Once a user logs in, the Localized Entries applied to the EmpowerID web pages will match the Preferred Language settings on that user's EmpowerID Person object.
EmpowerID uses a number of criteria to determine what language should be applied to the pages of the EmpowerID Web application. These criteria and their precedence are as follows:
- Language Query string parameter - A language query string parameter can be appended to the base URL for any page associated with the Web application to force the Web application to display that page in a given language. For example, if you want to display the pages of the Web application in a specific language, you append the URL for the Home page with lang=<ISO 639 culture code>-<ISO 3166 subculture code>, as in https://sso.empowerid.com/EmpowerIDV5/?lang=fr-fr, where sso.empowerid.com is the FQDN of the EmpowerID Web server in your environment, and fr-fr represents the ISO settings for the appropriate locale. EmpowerID will then append that parameter to each page of the Web application until it is removed from the URL or the user session ends. Thus, searches for people as well as any pages opened by clicking on an action tile will be displayed in the language associated with the language query string parameter.
- Person's Preferred Language - If a language query string parameter is not used, EmpowerID displays all localized entries in the Preferred Language set on the Person.
An exception to this rule is the Login page of the EmpowerID Web application. If a language query string parameter is not used, EmpowerID displays the text of the page to the user based on the language settings applied to the browser on their local machine. If the preferred language of the Person logging in differs from the browser's language setting, EmpowerID will display the pages in that person's preferred language once they have authenticated.
- Browser Language Settings - Finally, if a a language query string parameter is not used and the user does not have a Preferred Language set on their Person object, EmpowerID displays the text of the page to the user in accordance with the language settings applied to their browser.