Compatibility issue with SmarterMail on Hostek

  • This website is hosted on Hostek. The client uses a SmarterMail account (a service of Hostek) to receive form entry emails. As of 5/13, when an applicant submitted the Employment Application form, the emails containing the form fields, followed by the attached PDF file, functioned correctly.

    On 5/15, the site was fully updated. We have not had issues with Gravity PDF forms on the other sites we are using them on, so we did not test them here. The client recently reported that since 5/15, all email entries from this form contained unparsed html, followed by a very long string of characters.

    We logged into their account to compare the emails, and it appears that the long string of characters might be the PDF. After updating everything, we made a test submission of the form. The email was still unparsed and contained the long string of characters.

    We added a Gmail account to the notifications for the form and submitted another application. The email that arrived in the Gmail account is parsed. No issues with it at all. But the same entry that was sent to the SmarterMail account is unparsed.

    We discussed the issue with Hostek’s customer service and the result of their troubleshooting was a suspicion that the issue was being caused by the long string of characters. They were unable to fix the issue at all on their side.

    After deactivating the PDF for the Employment Application form and submitting the form again, the email was parsed correctly. No PDF attachment was present (as expected – it was deactivated).

    It appears that the issue must be compatibility between SmarterMail and Gravity PDF after a patch sometime prior to or on 5/15.

    I do not see how to attach screenshots of the unparsed email within SmarterMail, but I can copy example sections of the unparsed email (I don’t see a point in copying it all over).

    The beginning of the email. This contains all the entries for the form as it should display in the email.

    <html>
<head>
<title>New Employment Application from Boberson,Bob</title>
</head>
<body>
<table width="99%" border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" bgcolor="#EAEAEA"><tr><td>
<table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<tr>
<td colspan="2" style="font-size:14px; font-weight:bold; background-color:#EEE; border-bottom:1px solid #DFDFDF; padding:7px 7px">Personal Information</td>
</tr>
<tr bgcolor="#EAF2FA">
<td colspan="2">

    The end of the unparsed fields of the email, and the beginning of the long string of characters:

    <font style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size:12px;">07/06/2020</font>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>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    The long string of characters continues for many many pages.

    Thank you for your help!

    Jeremy

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Author Jake Jackson

    (@blue-liquid-designs)

    Hi Jeremy,

    Thanks for providing that info about the issue.

    That it works in Gmail but doesn’t work in SmarterMail suggests an issue with the Smartermail software, and not with how WordPress is sending the mail + attachment(s). But let’s do some additional debugging.

    We’ll need to take a closer look at the raw email source that was received for both the Gmail and SmarterMail accounts. Here’s a guide for doing this in Gmail: https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-view-the-source-of-a-message-in-gmail-1172105. I’m not sure about how to do it in SmarterMail though. Because it’ll contain sensitive information, please fill out a support ticket on our website and provide the details to us directly.

    Thread Starter sq205

    (@sq205)

    Hello Jake,

    Thank you for the response, and the additional debugging. I opened a support ticket on your website and provided a copy of the raw email source.

    Looking forward to your findings.

    Plugin Author Jake Jackson

    (@blue-liquid-designs)

    Thanks for sending through that info.

    I checked over the raw email content for any errors that might cause this issue, but couldn’t find any problem with the formatting. The message is correctly marked as a multipart/mixed content type and includes a boundary marker. That marker is present between the HTML and the attachment. I also successfully decoded the PDF attachment from base64 and was able to view it, meaning the PDF document isn’t corrupt.

    There’s a couple other tests you can run just to be sure it’s not an issue on your end:

    1. Adjust the Notification content from {all_fields} to a plain text string and resend. This will rule out the generated HTML causing a parsing issue in SmarterMail.
    2. Install and enable the Gravity Forms Debug Add-on so that only Gravity Forms and Gravity PDF are active and resend the notification email

    If the problem persists after running both those tests, I’d say it’s definitely on the SmarterMail side.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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