This worked well for me with a Dell Vostro 3550 and Ubuntu Server 14.04.4 virtualised inside VirtualBox (Version 5.0.16 r105871). When you run this command, the shell will present the configurator and the choices this user recommends are valid mostly. By contrast, I chose the Dell SK-8125 as a reasonably close match to the Vostro 3550. I also set the left Alt key to function as the AltGr key and this solved the problem. Now, if I want to type the pipe ( | ) character, I use the key combination

ALT+~

This is not the most intuitive solution; but it works!