Send Email Notification response rule body is malformed if HTML code is provided in the notification content

Products

• Data Loss Prevention Enforce

Issue/Introduction

You have configured a Send Email Notification response rule in one of your policies using HTML code in the Notification Content body. The same HTML body is properly displayed when opening in a browser directly, but when the e-mail notification is delivered the content of the notification appears malformed. It will be especially visible if a table is used thus it will be used as an example in the article.

Environment

15.8 or later

Cause

The Notification Content body field is designed around inserting plain text. It can accommodate HTML code however it must be noted that the notification, it's whole body, is later delivered as HTML and certain modifications are done to it. 

Specifically any new line character (enter) inserted into the body of the notification will be translated to HTML <BR> tag to properly display plain text in the same format as provided in the entry box. This means that if HTML code is entered in the standard easy to read format each new line will become <BR> in the resulting e-mail notification. 

For example the HTML code below:

<table style="border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:0;">
<thead>
    <tr>
        <th style="border-color:black;border-style:solid;background-color:#DEDDDD">Header 1</th>
        <th style="border-color:black;border-style:solid;background-color:#DEDDDD">Header 2</th>
    </tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
    <tr>
        <td style="border-color:black;border-style:solid">Value 1</td>
        <td style="border-color:black;border-style:solid">Value 2</td>
    </tr>
</tbody>
</table>

Which in a web browser would look like below:

Will be transformed to:

<BR><BR><table style="border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:0;">
<BR><thead>
<BR>    <tr>
<BR>        <th style="border-color:black;border-style:solid;background-color:#DEDDDD">Header 1</th>
<BR>        <th style="border-color:black;border-style:solid;background-color:#DEDDDD">Header 2</th>
<BR>    </tr>
<BR></thead>
<BR><tbody>
<BR>    <tr>
<BR>        <td style="border-color:black;border-style:solid">Value 1</td>
<BR>        <td style="border-color:black;border-style:solid">Value 2</td>
<BR>    </tr>
<BR></tbody>
<BR></table>

 

Due to this the table delivered in the e-mail notification will appear malformed. It will contain unnecessary empty lines:

 

Resolution

To resolve the issue strip your HTML code off any new line characters and indentations. Insert the stripped HTML code into your response rule and save the changes. Removing indentations is optional and is strictly for the consistency of the code appearance but won't affect the new lines.

The example HTML code for the table in the above example would like like so:

<table style="border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:0;"><thead><tr><th style="border-color:black;border-style:solid;background-color:#DEDDDD">Header 1</th><th style="border-color:black;border-style:solid;background-color:#DEDDDD">Header 2</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td style="border-color:black;border-style:solid">Value 1</td><td style="border-color:black;border-style:solid">Value 2</td></tr></tbody></table>

The resulting table delivered with the e-mail notification will then look like so:

 

Additional Information

The appearance of the table may differ slightly depending on the E-mail client used and how it interprets HTML code. 

Please note that Broadcom Support does not assist in writing any scripts or code.