Hi Detlev,

Apologies for the wait on this one. It took longer to land than we'd hoped.

The fix has shipped. The color-coded priority column now renders correctly no matter what language your install runs in — it's no longer tied to the literal English word "Priority," so it'll work on your German install without the workaround.

One thing on the version number: we'd said this would land in osTicket-1.18.3-Awesome-107. In the meantime osTicket put out a security release (1.18.4), so we rebased onto it and reset our build number — what we'd planned as -107 shipped as osTicket-1.18.4-Awesome-101. Same fix, new base. As a bonus it also rolls up osTicket's June 2026 security patches, so it's worth grabbing regardless.

You'll find it in My Account → Downloads, and the release notes are here: https://osawesome.com/documentation/release-history/#1-18-4-awesome-101

After upgrading you can name the Priority column whatever you like in German — the workaround is no longer needed.

Thanks again for the clear report, and thanks to chrswsmn for the workaround in the meantime. You're both credited in the release notes.

This is a bug in osTicket core (include/class.thread.php) rather than something osTicket Awesome modifies, so as a matter of policy its not something I can patch on our end (I don't patch upstream issues in osTicket Awesome as doing so would create too much chaos over time).

What I can do is take your report and open an issue on the osTicket GitHub tracker on your behalf. You've already written the hard part. I'd send you the link so you can follow it upstream.

Would you like me to do that? Or perhaps you would rather do it yourself and receive all of the glory. Let me know which you prefer.

• osTicket-1.18.3-Awesome-104
• PHP 8.3.6

include/class.thread.php

class MergedEvent extends ThreadEvent {
function getDescription($mode=self::MODE_STAFF) {
return sprintf(
$this->template(
__('{somebody} merged this ticket with %s{data.id}%s{data.ticket}%s {timestamp}'),
$mode
),
'', ''
);
}
}

Stack trace points directly to the sprintf() call.

Root Cause:
The {somebody} placeholder is expanded before sprintf() is executed.

In our installation the merged event was created by an agent named:

Casper F. Sørensen

The generated HTML contains an avatar URL with URL-encoded characters:

name=Casper+F.+S%C3%B8rensen

After placeholder substitution, sprintf() receives a string containing:

%C3%B8

PHP 8 interprets "%C" as a format specifier and throws:

ValueError: Unknown format specifier "C"

This causes the entire ticket thread rendering to fail.

Example Debug Output:
Template result:

<img class="avatar" ... name=Casper+F.+S%C3%B8rensen" />Casper F. Sørensen
merged this ticket with 344
Ticket #S416

Expected Behavior:
Merged ticket events should render correctly regardless of agent names containing non-ASCII characters such as:

ø
æ
å
ü
é
etc.

Actual Behavior:
Ticket thread rendering fails with a fatal PHP error.

Suggested Fix:
Avoid using sprintf() after placeholder expansion.

One possible approach:

Build the link placeholders before template rendering.
Use str_replace() instead of sprintf().
Escape literal percent signs before passing strings to sprintf().

For example:

return str_replace(
array('LINK_START', 'LINK_MID', 'LINK_END'),
array('', ''),
$this->template(__($raw), $mode)
);

Impact:
Any merged ticket can become unreadable when the merge event was performed by an agent whose display name results in URL-encoded percent sequences being present in the rendered HTML.

This appears to be a PHP 8 compatibility issue rather than a localization or theme issue.

form table.list td .truncate {
display: block;
max-width: 100% !important;
white-space: nowrap;
overflow: hidden;
}
form table.list td .truncate:not(.bleed) {
text-overflow: ellipsis;
}

One heads-up: this applies to every column you've set to Clip or Ellipsis (including Subject), not just "Issue summary". There's no reliable way to target a single custom column, since columns can be reordered. And on narrow screens it'll cut text more aggressively. If that tradeoff works for your data-heavy view, it should do the job.

The color-block priority column only shows up when that column's name is the English word "Priority". On a German install the column is named "Priorität", so osTicket Awesome doesn't recognize it and falls back to plain text. That's what Detlev is seeing. The same issue exists in any language that isn't English.

Workaround (thanks chrswsmn): edit the queue column and set its name to "Priority" (English). Go to Admin Panel → Manage → Ticket Queues, open the queue, select the Priority column, and set the name to "Priority". The color blocks and icon header come back.

We've now fixed this properly and it will be included in the next release (osTicket-1.18.3-Awesome-107). I will post an update here when that is available.