Type-ahead auto-complete does not work as expected on a multi-language instances - Known Error

Type-ahead auto-complete does not work as expected on a multi-language instances Description Instances with I18N internationalization plugins fail to apply the type-ahead auto-completer when switched to a non-English language.

Analysis of the generated html across English / French show the following differences:

...if (!e.ac) new AJAXTableCompleter(gel('sys_display.incident.watch_list')

...if (!e.ac) new AJAXReferenceCompleter(gel('sys_display.incident.watch_list')

Steps to Reproduce

Login any base system instance on any release in English language. Navigate to Plugins and activate the French plugin. Observe the dictionary attributes for field task.watch_list slushbucket_ref_no_expand=true,no_sort=true,ref_ac_columns=first_name Open an incident form. Unlock the Watch List Type 't' for names search. Note the resulting rows displayed. Switch to French language. Repeat steps 3-5. Note the different results. Workaround After carefully considering the severity and frequency of the issue, and the risk of attempting a fix, it has been decided to not address this issue in any current or future releases. We do not make this decision lightly and we apologize for any inconvenience. If you have any questions regarding this problem, please contact ServiceNow Technical Support .

However, limited to reference fields only, you can work around the behaviour by explicitly forcing the field dictionary attribute with:

ref_auto_completer=AJAXTableCompleter

So for example, in case of the Watch List:

ref_auto_completer=AJAXTableCompleter,slushbucket_ref_no_expand=true,no_sort=true,ref_ac_columns=first_name