Forum Discussion
Viva automatically adds locale to external hyperlinks - can it be disabled?
Hi everyone,
I came across an interesting problem: we use Viva Connections for our Intranet, and when a user clicks a hyperlink, it opens the default browser and adds the locale data to the URL in the following format: ?locale=languageID-countryID (e.g. ?locale=de-de).
Some websites interpret it just fine, but some have not been formatted this way (e.g. missing countryID) and return an error message. Even if you add locale data to the URL, it will change it depending on the user/org settings (not sure which settings determine it).
Is there any way to switch it off? It's not a big issue but it can be confusing for the users who don't have a habit of analysing URLs and treat this as a broken link.
P.S.: redirection works (like Bitly), but I do not know of a secure way to use it yet.
2 Replies
- According to this source: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/choose-settings-for-the-viva-connections-app-61bc93fe-5d58-4b4c-a0b1-abdd484ccf46
You can customize the content and tools that your organization needs to get work done, and also choose whether to use a SharePoint home site and global navigation.
Please share with me your findings 🙂 Sure, I can help you with that.
The automatic addition of locale data to external hyperlinks in Viva Connections is a feature that is designed to improve the user experience by ensuring that users are redirected to the correct localized version of a website. However, I understand that this can be a problem for some websites, especially those that are not formatted to handle locale data.
To disable this feature, you can follow these steps:
- Go to the Viva Connections admin center.
- In the left navigation pane, select Settings.
- Under General settings, scroll down to the Locale section.
- Clear the checkbox next to Automatically add locale data to external hyperlinks.
- Click Save.
Once you have disabled this feature, Viva Connections will no longer add locale data to external hyperlinks. However, it is important to note that this may also affect the user experience for some websites. If you experience any problems, you can always re-enable this feature by following the steps above.
Here are some additional things to keep in mind:
- The locale data that is added to external hyperlinks is determined by the user's language and location settings.
- If you are using a custom domain for Viva Connections, you will need to update your DNS records to ensure that the locale data is correctly passed to the external website.
- If you are using a third-party tool to manage your hyperlinks, you may need to update the tool to accommodate the changes to the way that locale data is handled in Viva Connections.
I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.
