enhancement Microsoft Office 365 Safe Links and rendering of links in emails into Timeline - use link text nor URL

[Martyn Houghton]

Can we raise an enhancement request to have a setting to control the rendering of HTML Href within emails when emails are used to log or applied to Service Manager Requests. The setting is to determine what element of the Href is rendered into the text used as part of the timeline updated, i.e. the 'link text' or the 'url' value.

At the moment the email rendering to textual timeline inserts the whole 'url' and not the human intended 'link text'.

With the introduction of new security features in Office 365 in the form of Safe Links in Microsoft Defender for Office 365, embedded 'url' for Href in emails are encoded in a very long url which redirect all links to via the Microsoft's Safe Links dynamic checking facility rather then the original source url. 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/office-365-security/atp-safe-links?view=o365-worldwide#:~:text=Safe Links scanning is enabled,Block the following URLs" list.

As these links are very long and also do not represent the original embedded link in a human readable form, we would like the setting to be added so the Href 'link text' is inserted into the textual timeline and not the 'url'' content. Without these setting the timeline entry become blotted and unreadable very quickly.

Cheers

Martyn

[sprasad]

+ 1

[Guest Paul Alexander]

+1

[Martyn Houghton]

@James Ainsworth @Steven Boardman

Is this being considered?

Cheers

Martyn

[sprasad]

@James Ainsworth@Steven Boardman Do you have an update on this please as our user base is chasing, with the current way of adding a URL into the update (via the Apply email to Request) is very time consuming.  Thank you.

[James Ainsworth]

Hi Sprasad,

From what I understand, this requirement is not being considered by Hornbill.  

Regards,

James

[Martyn Houghton]

@James Ainsworth

Thats disappointing Hornbill are not planning to render the HTML links as per the standard and established rendering applied by most other applications.

Cheers

Martyn

[Steve Giller]

@Martyn Houghton It's my understanding that you're talking about emails posted to the Request Timeline here - this is not an HTML view (for reasons discussed frequently elsewhere) it's the Plain Text body of an email which is rendered here. If you use the View Email option, which does render HTML, you will see the links rendered as per the standard.

[Martyn Houghton]

@Steve Giller

The system does render/remove HTML code within the email when it 'converted' into text entries in the timeline, or we would have timeline entries containing large volumes of HTML tags. The text conversion is explicit inserting the url element of the href HTML statement rather than the link text element.

I am aware of the requests to have timeline entries support rich text formatting rather than just plan text, however what we are asking here of for the text conversion process to insert the link text element.

Cheers

Martyn

[Steve Giller]

@Martyn Houghton The email standard requires an email to have a Plain Text body. This is what Hornbill uses to populate the Timeline.

If the email also has an HTML body (as most do) this will be the view you see in an email client such as Outlook or, indeed, Hornbill; however the Plain Text body does not contain any HTML tags or formatting, this includes anchors for URLS.
The HTML body will have:
 

<a href="https://www.domain.com/page">Friendly Link</a>

but the Plain Text body will have:

https://www.domain.com/page

otherwise a user who chooses to view the email in plain text will not have access to the link - seeing "Friendly Link" is of no use.

Once the email has passed through the SafeLinks system the HTML body will have:

<a href="https://massively_long_safelinks_link_with_an_encoded_url_version_of_https://www.domain.com/page">Friendly Link</a>

and the Plain Text body will have:
 

https://massively_long_safelinks_link_with_an_encoded_url_version_of_https://www.domain.com/page

in exactly the same way and for the same reasons.

 

Hornbill is doing what it is designed to do - presenting the Plain Text body as the Timeline/Details content and the HTML body in the "View Email" version.

 

Note: I'm sure that is somewhat oversimplified, and Development may wish to tweak the description, but 

12 minutes ago, Martyn Houghton said:

The system does render/remove HTML code within the email when it 'converted' into text entries in the timeline

is not correct - we are not removing anything, we are using the Plain Text body which is a required part (in fact, the only required part) of the email standard.

[Martyn Houghton]

@Steve Giller

Thanks for confirming the method used by Hornbill.

Therefore in order to allow this to be configurable, Hornbill would need to switch from inserting the Plain Text Body to rendering the HTML to Text format supported by the timeline such as a HTML to Wiki Markup convertor?

Cheers

Martyn

[Victor]

On 11/5/2021 at 9:00 AM, Martyn Houghton said:

Hornbill would need to switch from inserting the Plain Text Body to rendering the HTML to Text format supported by the timeline such as a HTML to Wiki Markup convertor?

@Martyn Houghton because same like wiki we need a consistent method of parsing the HTML email part. Just thinking of the HTML that Outlook or Word creates, it will be a nightmare to come up with a parser for that... As such, for the foreseeable future Service Manager will use the plain text part of an email to create the timeline update.