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Enable HTML Content in Ticket Thread by Default
Idea shared by Michael Luciuk - 1/14/2015 at 4:21 PM
Declined
When a user views a ticket the view it in a non-HTML/Plain Text view.   We really need to have the HTML displayed by default in a tickets preview pane  (I know this is the opposite of most customers).  By HTML I mostly am referring to tables, links, bolds, images and fonts.
 
Is there a configuration or setting that can change the default setting of the Preview Pane?   In SmarterMail  there is a setting under account settings called "Display Format" that one can switch between HTML and Plain Text. 
 
We would be amiable to changing this at code base level if needed.  

23 Replies

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0
Employee Replied
1/14/2015 at 4:33 PM
Employee Post
Hello Michael,
 
Thank you for the inquiry about modifying the default view in SmarterTrack. Unfortunately we do not have any settings or allowed configurations outside of the application that you can enable. We have done this based upon the design of the application to provide you with the best overall performance. If we were to use the HTML format then some formatting may not be able to make it through and to alleviate any issues we have provided the HTML view apposed to the format being the default.
 
Thanks.
 
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+1
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Employee Replied
6/3/2016 at 8:23 AM
Employee Post
I changed this thread from a Question to a Proposed Idea in order to facilitate tracking on this request. 
0
Fair enough, but then perhaps an option to suppress
conversion of Username@Domainname.com to Username@Domainname.com<mailto:Username@Domainname.com>

A few of our client's despite our best advice have a heavy loaded signature with links to images , Facebook , LinkedIn , you name it.
after a few back and forth emails the ticket is full of gibberish. I tried to post a sanitized sample and the forum would not allow it. LOL
Lansend.com
1
Configuring incoming tickets to display HTML by default:
 
Has there been any movement on this idea?  We requested this many years ago, and it's still a problem.  Many of our tickets are jibberish, and our agents must take the extra step to "Show HTML".  We are growing quickly, and this is becoming a big time-waster.  We will need a different solution, if this can't be configured.  We're looking at SalesForce helpdesk and service cloud (we already use SalesForce to manage our sales teams).  But, we're very familiar with SmarterTrack, and have a lot of history here, and really don't want to change.
1
Andrew Barker Replied
2/2/2018 at 8:24 AM
Employee Post
This is a feature that we are looking at implementing. We are currently discussing how soon we will be able to fit it into our roadmap. This is still part of our internal discussions as to exactly what changes we will need to make to make this a smooth and effective feature.
Andrew Barker Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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+1
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Hi Andrew,

any news on this?
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I am reposting my suggestion for this topic from another thread that was locked.

I am guessing that HTML has not been shown by default out of security concerns.  Just a guess, because I haven't seen any employees weigh in on this.

However, the security issue can be mitigated by running a filter over the HTML before it gets shown (removing all scripts, iframes, objects, etc.).

Adding the ability to see HTML content by default would be extremely useful, and removes unnecessary extra steps now required by agents.

My suggestion has four parts:

  1. Add an option to be able to turn on "View HTML" by default in tickets.
  2. Add an option for which HTML element types to KEEP in the document, as a comma-delimited string (all other elements would be removed).  My suggestion is the following elements will be allowed: "p,div,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,br,blockquote,hr,pre,table,thead,tbody,tfoot,tr,th,td,ul,ol,li,dl,dt,dd,b,i,u,strong,em,abbr,cite,code,del,dfn,ins,kbd,q,s,samp,sub,sup,var".  These are all structural or built-in font styles, so they are all considered safe.  Allowing things like a head section or styles (as well as obvious things like scripts or objects) is unsafe, because they can allow injection of something that an agent will see in their browser.  Even an image is "unsafe" because it can be inserted by a user as a beacon.
  3. Add an option for which HTML attributes to KEEP in each element.  Every other attribute would be dropped.  This can either be a stand-alone option, or can actually be combined with option #2 above.  It might be useful to combine with option #2, because that would allow granular control over which attributes are allowed within each element.  You can see an example of this when configuring a TinyMCE editor control using the valid_elements option: https://www.tiny.cloud/docs/configure/content-filtering/#valid_elements.
  4. Add an option for custom styles to apply to the tickets' HTML.  Some might think this is redundant because you can add custom CSS to each brand, but it would actually be useful to be able to apply different CSS styles to each ticket template, knowing that each template might have different HTML associated with it.
1
+1 For me, this would be a great feature! Any updates on this?
GearHost.com
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Please create an option for HTML by default!!
2
+1 it's very odd to open tickets and they display all funky because sender is using HTML which is more and more common these days. Every other message is broken.
3
It's astounding to me that a company that produces such an excellent html enabled Email Interface seems to have a problem with allowing SmarterTrack to have an option to show/hide html by default.
2
+10 asap please
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Smarter Tools staff have been silent on this since February 2018.
It'd be nice to hear if this hit the roadmap and when we might expect this? A little crazy that HTML isn't the default view considering so many emails come inbound in HTML these days.
0
+1 (we miss customer drawing attachments because we are wading through a list of social buttons)
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Employee Replied
12/26/2019 at 1:37 PM
Employee Post

Hello Michael,  

Thank you for the inquiry about modifying the default view in SmarterTrack. Plain Text has been the default after having tested HTML in earlier versions. As you know, conversations are many many messages and HTML elongates the conversations dramatically and slows down the browser. Based on this, we were asked to show as much information in a conversation as we can in the fastest way possible while making it simple to view the HTML for a specific message within the conversation. 
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It's awesome to get some kind of response on this Justin, but at the very least this should be an option so that we can make that decision.  You have many people here practically begging for HTML e-mail as the default.  Maybe there should be multiple options: One of them might be "Switch to plain text after 'X' replies have been made to an e-mail thread".  Just trying to think outside the box here, in order for our support system to show e-mail in the way our customers intended.
2
Year 2022! Howdy all, any chance this has become an implemented option yet?

The reason I ask, is that some tickets will come into our system and we won't be able to see the message until we click the "View as HTML" option. Usually this happens on emails that are being forwarded with a message from the forwarder attached. 
2
@Dataholic

It's been years, and the thread was already marked as DECLINED. So, I am going to hazard a guess that SmarterTools is not going to make any changes to make the customers that are asking for it, happy. They have decided that their way is the way.

I don't see why giving us the option is a problem, but for them it apparently is.
____________________________________ Ben Santiardo, Senior Programmer Analyst Eastern Suffolk BOCES
1
There has to be a better way. So many emails we get have HTML content these days.
It'd be nice to give users the option to set defaults that work for them.
0
@Michael

I am pretty sure everyone on this thread is is complete agreement with you. Having the "option" is better than being forced to do it the SmarterTrack way. Having the decision taken away from us is not making many people happy. As was suggested previously, even if giving us an option to allow for the first "X" number of messages to be HTML and beyond that then default them to TEXT (if loading speed is actually the concern). And if security is a concern ... SCRIPT tags can be sanitized out of the HTML content when the E-Mail is retrieved and stored into the DB, eliminating security concerns upon HTML loading.

But be that as it may, this request will fall on deaf ears as we have seen SmarterTools has made their decision on this matter and will not take our complaints into consideration.
____________________________________ Ben Santiardo, Senior Programmer Analyst Eastern Suffolk BOCES
0
Lack of thee options made me switch to FRONT. Front works very nicely has more options etc.

Smartertools, is a nice but outdated system. I wish it wasn't as Front is way to expensive. 
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