Subject of SMS event notice is not decoded by smartermail

Problem reported by JohnC - 7/14/2015 at 8:05 PM

Submitted

If I setup an SMS notification and include the #subject# variable, the subject text is displayed in an uncoded UTF-8 format in my received sms message on my phone.

It seems smartermail is not first decoding the subject text before sending it out.

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Matt Petty Replied

7/15/2015 at 8:33 AM

Employee Post

Would you be able to provide an example of the received message.
So your seeing #subject# in the message?

Matt Petty Senior Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com

JohnC Replied

7/15/2015 at 9:46 AM

No, I am seeing something like below instead of the actual subject text:

SUBJ: UTF-8?AD7F03E5F22638A6

Bruce Barnes Replied

7/15/2015 at 10:06 AM

SmarterMail version?

Bruce Barnes ChicagoNetTech Inc brucecnt@comcast.net Phonr: (773) 491-9019 Phone: (224) 444-0169 E-Mail and DNS Security Specialist Network Security Specialist Customer Service Portal: https://portal.chicagonettech.com Website: https://www.ChicagoNetTech.com Security Blog: http://networkbastion.blogspot.com/ Web and E-Mail Hosting, E-Mail Security and Consulting

JohnC Replied

7/15/2015 at 10:24 AM

It seems that if the subject text of an incoming email is encoded in UTF-8 format, then smarter mail does not decode it before it sends it out to the SMS notification email address - it just passes it through unchanged. And because the cell companies "Email-2-SMS" service is not very good, the subject text comes in as coded text, which is unreadable.

JohnC Replied

7/15/2015 at 11:18 AM

13.5.5640

JohnC Replied

7/15/2015 at 11:23 AM

OK, I just received another text message and here is the exact text:

FRM:mysmartermail@account.com
SUBJ:=?utf-8?B?MDAwREM1RDFDNkQ4KERhZEJhc2VtZW
MSG:From: 123@ABC.com
Email Size: 243 KB

Here is the script in the notification event:

Subject: #subject#
Short Body (SMS): From: #fromaddress#
Email Size: #sizekb# KB

Matt Petty Replied

7/16/2015 at 8:11 AM

Employee Post

Could you try directing that email to a non-sms email, like a different personal email. Do you see this behavior on those emails?

Matt Petty Senior Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com

JohnC Replied

7/16/2015 at 8:52 AM

No, probably because the email client I am using to view the email is properly decoding the subject field when it loads the email and displays it to me.

I guess because there is no email client being used after the email is converted into an SMS, that's why its not getting decoded.

But, if smartermail would decode the subject *prior* to sending out the email-2-sms email, then the subject would display OK.

Joe Wolf Replied

7/17/2015 at 6:18 AM

I've used this feature for years and have never had a problem with my pone decoding the Subject. What kind of phone are you using?

Thanks, -Joe

JohnC Replied

7/17/2015 at 7:53 AM

Please understand, that the UTF-8 encoding of the subject depends on the application being used to send the email. So, it's not an issue with my phone (which is a Samsung S4).

Apparently, Foscam IP security cameras encode their subject using UTF-8, and that's the whole reason of why I am setting up a notification is because a "motion" alarm from the camera is important and I need to know right away.

Even though most email sending applications may not encode the subject in UTF-8, it appears to still be part of the email specification and should be supported.

In fact, Smartermail must have support for decoding of an UTF-8 subject because if I read the email in your webmail UI, it properly decodes the subject so it is legible.

I'm guessing that all you need to do is add that decoding routine into your notification module so it will decode any UTF-8 encoded subject before sending out a SMS notification.

JohnC Replied

7/17/2015 at 7:58 AM

Also, part of the problem may be that the UTF-8 decoding routines depending on the text actually starting off with "UTF-8?" in the absolute beginning of the string. But since the subject text is being placed mid-way in the "body" of the outgoing SMS text, this may be why it is not being decoded properly.

(BTW, I am a developer myself)

JohnC Replied

7/17/2015 at 8:02 AM

...and that's why Smartermail must decode the subject *before* building the outgoing SMS body text because thats the only time the subject is still a standalone object that will have "UTF-8" in the absolute start of the string and can be decoded properly.

JohnC Replied

8/2/2015 at 10:36 AM

The bottom line is that some email sending apps/devices send the subject using UTF-8 encoding and some don't.

For the ones that do send email to me in UTF-8 format, if I setup a notification in smartermail, I get this in my notifications:

[subject=] ?utf-8?B?MDAwREM1RDFDNkQ4KERhZEJhc2VtZW

So, all I am asking is for smartermail to properly decode the subject of an email *before* sending the text of the subject out in a notification.

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