Setting up Bitrix24 multilingualism

Setting Up Multilingual Support in Bitrix24

Employees from five countries work at the company. The B24 portal is in Russian — the German office doesn't understand CRM stage names, Polish managers get confused by contact card fields, and English-speaking contractors in the extranet see an interface they can't read. Switching the interface language is half the battle. The real problem is CRM fields, document templates, and automatic notifications that remain in one language for everyone.

Interface Language Settings

Bitrix24 supports interface language switching at the portal level and at the user level.

Portal level: An administrator sets the default language in portal settings. This language applies to new users and system elements (names of standard CRM stages, task types, statuses).

User level: Each employee can switch the language in their profile. The interface — menus, buttons, system notifications — switches to the selected language. Supported languages: Russian, English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Turkish, and others.

Important: interface language switching does not affect user data — CRM stage names, custom fields, document templates, and business processes remain in the language they were created in.

Multilingual CRM Fields

Standard CRM fields (company, contact, deal) don't support multiple language versions "out of the box". Solution — via custom fields and business processes:

• Field duplication. For each language, create a set of custom fields: UF_COMPANY_NAME_EN, UF_COMPANY_NAME_DE, UF_COMPANY_NAME_RU. On the card, all variants are displayed or only the relevant one — via field visibility settings by role.
• Automatic translation. A business process when creating or updating a CRM entity calls an external API (Google Translate, DeepL) via webhook and populates fields in other languages.
• Contact language selection. Field UF_LANGUAGE in the contact/company card determines the preferred language of communication. Business processes and document templates orient to this field.

Multilingual Open Channels

Open channels (chat with customers via website, messengers, social media) receive inquiries in different languages. Setup:

For each language, you can create a separate Open Channel tied to the language channel (e.g., separate chat widget on EN-version of the site), or use one channel with internal routing.

Document Templates

The B24 document generator (invoices, quotes, contracts) works with templates. For multilingual support:

• Create separate templates for each language: Invoice (RU), Invoice (EN), Invoice (DE).
• In a business process or CRM robot, template selection is tied to the UF_LANGUAGE field of the contact or company.
• Automatic generation: robot when changing deal stage creates a document in the client's language.

Notifications and Mailings

Automatic notifications (CRM robots, business processes) are sent in one language by default. For multilingual support:

• CRM robots with condition: if UF_LANGUAGE = EN → send email template in English, if DE → in German, else — in Russian.
• Email templates are duplicated for each language. Substitutions (client name, amount) work the same.
• SMS notifications — similar logic by condition.

Extranet

External users (contractors, clients) in the extranet see the interface in the language set in their profile. Administrator can:

• Set the default language for the extranet separately from the main portal.
• Set group and project names in multiple languages (via description).
• Prepare instructions and materials in the language of external users.

What We Implement

• Interface language setup at portal and user levels
• Multilingual CRM field system with automatic translation
• Open Channel routing by client language
• Multilingual document templates with auto-selection by contact language
• Conditional notification and mailing logic by languages
• Extranet localization for external users