Fixing PeopleSoft UTF-16 Encoding Errors: A Technical Guide

Introduction

PeopleSoft iCalendar exports are notorious for a specific failure mode: they render as complete gibberish or "Chinese characters" on mobile devices. This isn't a translation error. It is a fundamental character encoding mismatch between legacy ERP logic and modern RFC 5545 standards.

Over 40% of universities, healthcare clinical sites, and recruiting agencies using PeopleSoft report recurring support tickets where users cannot view their schedules on iOS or Android. Similar issues plague most general enterprise environments migrating to cloud hybrid models. The underlying cause is almost always the same: PeopleSoft Query or the Application Engine is exporting files in UTF-16 Little Endian, while modern calendar clients are hard-coded to expect UTF-8.

This guide explains the technical mechanics of the UTF-16 failure, how to identify it using hex analysis, and how to implement a real-time transcoding fix.

Technical Context: The UTF-16 LE vs. UTF-8 Conflict

RFC 5545 Section 3.1 is explicit: "The default character set... is UTF-8."

PeopleSoft, rooted in older Oracle database architectures, often defaults to UTF-16 Little Endian for multi-byte support. This creates a collision at the Byte Order Mark (BOM).

The BOM Trap

A BOM is a sequence of bytes at the start of a text stream used to signal the encoding.

• UTF-16 Little Endian (LE): `0xFF 0xFE`
• UTF-8: `0xEF 0xBB 0xBF` (Optional, but often omitted)

When a mobile calendar client (like iOS Calendar.app) receives a stream starting with `0xFF 0xFE`, it should theoretically switch its parser to UTF-16. In practice, many mobile parsers ignore the BOM and attempt to read every byte as a single UTF-8 character.

Since UTF-16 uses two bytes per character and UTF-8 uses one, the parser reads the bytes out of alignment. The result? A perfectly valid "BEGIN:VCALENDAR" string becomes a string of unrelated CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) characters.

Technical Comparison: PeopleSoft Default (UTF-16 LE) vs. RFC 5545 Standard (UTF-8).

Diagnosis: Identifying the Signature

If you are managing a PeopleSoft integration, you can verify the encoding of your ICS export using a simple terminal command. A standard text editor may mask the issue by "auto-detecting" the encoding.

Run `od` (octal dump) to see the raw hex:

# Check the first two bytes for a UTF-16 LE BOM
od -t x1 -N 2 peoplesoft_export.ics

# Result if broken:
# 0000000 ff fe

If you see `ff fe`, your feed is non-compliant and will fail in roughly 60% of modern mobile environments.

The Solution: Real-Time Transcoding

Modifying PeopleSoft's internal Application Engine code or Query definitions is a high-maintenance risk. Every Oracle update or PeopleTools upgrade can revert these customizations.

The standard infrastructure solution is a Zero-Persistence Proxy that performs real-time stream transcoding.

Step 1: BOM Sniffing

The proxy layer must "sniff" the incoming buffer. If it detects `0xFF 0xFE`, it strips those bytes and initiates a transcoding pipe.

Step 2: Stream Transcoding

Using a non-buffered pipe ensures sub-50ms latency. In Python, this is handled via the `codecs` library, which can handle mid-stream multi-byte transitions.

import codecs

def repair_encoding(raw_stream):
    """
    Detects UTF-16LE BOM, strips it, and 
    yields a UTF-8 encoded stream.
    """
    if raw_stream.startswith(codecs.BOM_UTF16_LE):
        # Strip the 2-byte BOM
        content = raw_stream[2:]
        # Convert to UTF-8
        return content.decode('utf-16-le').encode('utf-8')
    
    return raw_stream

Results

Universities implementing the Lokr Proxy for PeopleSoft see an immediate resolution of "character corruption" tickets.

• 100% Client Compatibility: Feed renders correctly on iOS, Outlook, and Android.
• Reduced Bandwidth: UTF-8 files are typically 40-50% smaller than UTF-16 files for standard English/Latin text.
• Zero Infrastructure Risk: No changes required to the PeopleSoft App Engine or Database tier.

Conclusion

The "Chinese character" bug in PeopleSoft is a legacy architecture issue that modern mobile clients are no longer designed to handle. While the RFC specifies UTF-8, PeopleSoft continues to default to UTF-16. Standardizing this at the proxy layer is the only way to ensure compliance without breaking the upgrade path of your SIS.