[wp-meta] [Making WordPress.org] #2938: WordCamp Sponsors: QBO does not accept sponsor company names that have non-Latin characters

[Making WordPress.org]

#2938: WordCamp Sponsors: QBO does not accept sponsor company names that have non-
Latin characters
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 Reporter:  coreymckrill             |      Owner:
     Type:  defect                   |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal                   |  Milestone:
Component:  WordCamp Site & Plugins  |   Keywords:  needs-patch
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 When a WordCamp submits a sponsor invoice, it goes into a queue to be
 approved by someone on the Global Community Team. Once it has been
 approved, it gets packaged up and submitted to Quickbooks Online (QBO,
 used by WPCS for invoicing) via the '''wordcamp-qbo-client''' plugin.

 The problem is that QBO's API does not accept an invoice if the name of
 the invoice recipient (sponsor) contains multibyte characters, and
 possibly anything other than ASCII. Instead it spits out a cryptic
 `Invalid content. Lexical error` message, and the invoice approver sees
 only a notice that says `ERROR: Invalid HTTP response code`.

 This tends to happen for WordCamp sponsors in countries that use other
 character sets such as Cyrillic or Thai.

 One way to solve this would be to add instructions to the ''Company Name''
 field in the ''Sponsor Info'' metabox specifying that the input must be
 spelled out with Latin characters. Often the title of the sponsor post
 itself is Latinized already, so it could be a simple matter of copying and
 pasting that. However, it seems like this could also be perceived as being
 very US-centric and culturally insensitive without a lengthy explanation
 of the technical reasons.

 There also might be a way to encode the sponsor company name (and other
 fields) in a way that the QBO API would accept, but that will require
 further research.

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Ticket URL: <https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/2938>
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