HTML not parsed in Service Desk
Summary
A customer in this ticket pointed out that the Service Desk function doesn't seem to parse HTML mails properly. After some extensive testing, I have verified the following results:
- If an email is sent to a Service Desk address that has both
text/plain
andtext/html
formats, the Service Desk will parse thetext/plain
format only. - If an email is sent to a Service Desk address that has only the
text/html
format, the Service Desk will parse this format. However, it will strip: -
- styling (
<body background="#CC0000" text="#FFFFFF">
, for example), as well as bold (<strong>
) and emphasis (<em>
)
- styling (
-
- images (
<img src="http://linktoanimage">
)
- images (
-
- (Note that if images are attached to the email, they render appropriately.)
- If an email is sent to a Service Desk address that has only the
text/html
format and this email contains links (<a href="link here">text</a>
), it will parse and render the links as intended, which is to say that the linking text will be retained and so will the hyperlink.
Steps to reproduce
- Set up a Service Desk email. If you use Gmail (as I did in my test), you'll need to add 2FA to the account in order to get an app password for the Service Desk to use.
- You can set up a free account at Miro.com and use your service desk email address to see how the emails from Miro open empty issues. This is because Miro only sends HTML emails and not
text/plain
equivalents.
Example Project
This is broken on GitLab.com as well:
https://gitlab.com/bcarranza/learning/-/issues/8
What is the current bug behavior?
If an email has a text/plain
format, it gets parsed regardless of the presence of a text/html
version. If a text/html
email comes in without a text/plain
version, all formatting and images (unless attached to the original email) are stripped. The only formatting that remains intact is hyperlinks (<a href="link address">text here</a>
).
What is the expected correct behavior?
The HTML should be properly rendered if there is no text/plain
version of the email included.
Relevant logs and/or screenshots
Output of checks
Results of GitLab environment info
Expand for output related to GitLab environment info
This bug happens on both SM and GitLab.com.
Possible fixes
@ulisesf hypothesizes that the service desk may not be MIME compliant. Slack thread