Maileater and attachments

Products

• CA Service Desk Manager
• CA Service Management - Service Desk Manager

Issue/Introduction

Maileater and attachments: different results on the base of 'Attach Entire Email' and 'Force Attachment Splitout' settings.

Environment

Release:12.9,14.1,17.x.
Component: CA Servicedesk Manager

Resolution

The emails sent to Service Desk to create or update requests can contain attachments and the maileater can manage them.

Consider that the maileater works correctly with plain text messages and so the attachments have to be really attached to the email (email in plain text) and not embedded (in this case the format of the email is no more plain text to be able to include pictures etc);

There are however situations in which images embedded in the email have been used.

In this last case, if a problem occurred, the way to 'solve' it was to attach the image to the email and not to use it embedded in the email, on the basis of what was said before; In the scenarios below are included situations with embedded images.

The final result depends also on the value of the checkboxes 'Attach Entire Email' and 'Force Attachment Splitout' inside the 'Default Mailbox Detail' page (in Administration tab, Email, Mailboxes, select the mailbox used).

• 'Attach Entire Email': if checked the result is the entire email attached to the request created.
• 'Force Attachment Splitout': if checked, not only the entire email is attached to the request but also the elements attached to the email sent to Service Desk are now attached separately to the request created.

Following are some example obtained using Mercury as the mail server and Outlook Express as the mail client; consider that things may differ with other mailserver/mail client.

Scenario 1

• Attach Entire Email = NO
  
  
• Force Attachment Splitout = NO
  
  
  • icon (.ico) file attached to the email
    
    
  • image (.jpg) file embedded in the email
    
    Note: I used a HTML format for the email to have the possibility to have an image embedded; consider however what said before, meaning that maileater works correctly with plain text.
    
    Result: request created
    
    
    • Icon (.ico) file attached and visible in the Attachment tab of the request
      
      
    • Image file lost (as maileater is not able in this case to manage html formatted files)

Scenario 2

• Attach Entire Email = YES
  
  
• Force Attachment Splitout = NO
  
  
  • icon (.ico) file attached to the email
    
    
  • image (.jpg) file embedded in the email
    
    Note: I used a HTML format for the email to have the possibility to have an image embedded; consider however what said before, meaning that maileater works correctly with plain text.
    
    Result: request created
    
    
    • Entire email has been attached and visible in the Attachment tab of the request
      
      Note: - if this attached email is opened inside Service Desk attachment tab, it is opened in plain text format and shows the icon (.ico) file and the image (.jpg) file as attachments.
      
      
    • if the format of the email, once opened, is changed in html, the icon (.ico) file is still seen as attachment while the image (.jpg) file is seen embedded in the email.

Scenario 3

• Attach Entire Email = NO
  
  
• Force Attachment Splitout = YES
  
  
  • icon (.ico) file attached to the email
    
    
  • image (.jpg) file embedded in the email
    
    Note: I used a HTML format for the email to have the possibility to have an image embedded; consider however what said before, meaning that maileater works correctly with plain text.
    
    Result: request created
    
    
    • Icon (.ico) file attached and visible in the Attachment tab of the request
      
      
    • Image file lost (as maileater is not able in this case to manage html formatted files)

Scenario 4

• Attach Entire Email = YES
  
  
• Force Attachment Splitout = YES
  
  
  • icon (.ico) file attached to the email
    
    
  • image (.jpg) file embedded in the email
    
    Note: I used a HTML format for the email to have the possibility to have an image embedded; consider however what said before, meaning that maileater works correctly with plain text.
    
    Result: request created
    
    
    • Icon (.ico) file attached and visible in the Attachment tab of the requestticket
      
      
    • Entire email has been attached and visible in the Attachment tab of the request.
      
      Note:
      
      • if this attached email is opened inside Service Desk attachment tab, it is opened in plain text format and shows the icon (.ico) file and the image (.jpg) file as attachments.
        
        
      • if the format of the email, once opened, is changed in html, the icon (.ico) file is still seen as attachment while the image (.jpg) file is seen embedded in the email.
        
        Note: in this last case I have in the Attachment tab of the Service Desk, two attachments (the entire email due to Attach Entire Email set to Yes and the icon file due to Force Attachment Splitout set to Yes)