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Copilot Email Formatting

  • March 2, 2017
  • 10 replies
  • 317 views
heather_hansen
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I'm having some challenges with formatting Copilot emails when they include tokens or links. When the email is sent, the tokens and links show up in a different font and size. I've been able to get around it by trying to match the font and size as closely as possible, but it's still noticeably different. Has anyone else experienced this?

Best answer by dan_ahrens

What often takes place when admins build email templates is they start in a document editor like MS Word or Google Docs to build out the text, links, etc and then cut and paste it into Gainsight. What they don't realize is that the word processing application adds a whole bunch of extra HTML tags that end up causing problems down the road.

Here are two examples of the same text. One was entered and built directly in JO and the other was built first in MS Word and then pasted into JO.

Can you see the difference in HTML formatting tags in just the first few lines of text?

Directly built in JO:

<p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; margin: 0px;">Hi Abby ,</p>

<p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br></p>

<p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; margin: 0px;">I'm a member of the Customer Success Team and wanted to send a quick email to provide you with an updated list of key resources.</p>

Built in MS Word and pasted into JO:

<p style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; line-height: 15pt; background: white; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;;color:#2F3941;">Hi Abby,</span></p>

<p style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; line-height: 15pt; background: white; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; widows: 2; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;;color:#2F3941;">I'm a member of the Customer

Success Team and wanted to send a quick email to provide you with an updated

list of key resources.</span></p>

And then if you pasted that same text through another text editor, in this case Gmail, then pasted it into JO, things get even more interesting:

<p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; line-height: 15pt; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; vertical-align: baseline; font-size: 12pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;;color:rgb(47, 57, 65);">Hi Abby,</span></p>

<p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; line-height: 15pt; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px; font-size: 12pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;;color:rgb(47, 57, 65);">I'm a member of the Customer Success Team and wanted to send a quick email to provide you with an updated list of key resources.</span></p>

Every one of those extra tags adds complexity and risk that some email client application will choke on that HTML code and display the content inconsistently.

And to show how insidious pasting - paste each of those groups of text into a template and look at the visual differences between these three blocks of text. The differences can be very minimal, but just frustrating enough to have you scratching your head.

Adding to this complexity is the fact that not only do different email clients interpret HTML tags differently, but some clients will alter email content when you forward it as well. Bonkers, right? That's the world of email clients and servers and why companies like Email on Acid have a business model!

ben
kyle_s
jason_milliken

10 replies

ben
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  • ben
  • Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
  • March 2, 2017
Hey Heather,

I see this all the time as well. I have found that if I completely remove the text from my template and re-insert, I am able to get around it. With that said, I would absolutely agree that something is fundamentally weird that we have to do that in the first place.

-Ben
-Ben
lori_dinardo
jason_milliken
  • jason_milliken
  • Contributor ⭐️⭐️
  • May 14, 2019
This is extremely annoying for me as well - it seems like Gainsight adds spaces before/after links and after a token (so that the comma after a firstname token in the email greeting has a space between it and the recipient's name.

dan_ahrens
Forum|alt.badge.img+2
  • dan_ahrens
  • Expert ⭐️⭐️⭐️
  • Answer
  • May 14, 2019
What often takes place when admins build email templates is they start in a document editor like MS Word or Google Docs to build out the text, links, etc and then cut and paste it into Gainsight. What they don't realize is that the word processing application adds a whole bunch of extra HTML tags that end up causing problems down the road.

Here are two examples of the same text. One was entered and built directly in JO and the other was built first in MS Word and then pasted into JO.

Can you see the difference in HTML formatting tags in just the first few lines of text?

Directly built in JO:

<p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; margin: 0px;">Hi Abby ,</p>

<p class="p2" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br></p>

<p class="p1" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; margin: 0px;">I'm a member of the Customer Success Team and wanted to send a quick email to provide you with an updated list of key resources.</p>

Built in MS Word and pasted into JO:

<p style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; line-height: 15pt; background: white; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;;color:#2F3941;">Hi Abby,</span></p>

<p style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; line-height: 15pt; background: white; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; widows: 2; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;;color:#2F3941;">I'm a member of the Customer

Success Team and wanted to send a quick email to provide you with an updated

list of key resources.</span></p>

And then if you pasted that same text through another text editor, in this case Gmail, then pasted it into JO, things get even more interesting:

<p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; line-height: 15pt; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; vertical-align: baseline; font-size: 12pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;;color:rgb(47, 57, 65);">Hi Abby,</span></p>

<p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; margin: 0in 0in 12pt; line-height: 15pt; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px; font-size: 12pt; font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:&quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;;color:rgb(47, 57, 65);">I'm a member of the Customer Success Team and wanted to send a quick email to provide you with an updated list of key resources.</span></p>

Every one of those extra tags adds complexity and risk that some email client application will choke on that HTML code and display the content inconsistently.

And to show how insidious pasting - paste each of those groups of text into a template and look at the visual differences between these three blocks of text. The differences can be very minimal, but just frustrating enough to have you scratching your head.

Adding to this complexity is the fact that not only do different email clients interpret HTML tags differently, but some clients will alter email content when you forward it as well. Bonkers, right? That's the world of email clients and servers and why companies like Email on Acid have a business model!

VP of Customer Success at Forcepoint
jason_milliken
  • jason_milliken
  • Contributor ⭐️⭐️
  • May 14, 2019
Thanks for the response, Dan - I'm currently using the "remove formatting" button in Journey Orchestrator once I pase the content in. Would you expect that to remove all the unnecessary HTML tags?

dan_ahrens
Forum|alt.badge.img+2
  • dan_ahrens
  • Expert ⭐️⭐️⭐️
  • May 14, 2019
It will remove some, but not all.

For example, take the content above in the

And then if you pasted that same text through another text editor, in this case Gmail, then pasted it into JO, things get even more interesting:

section.

Paste it into JO and then use the "remove formatting" option. Some will be removed but it won't take you back to the way it appears in the

Directly built in JO:

section

VP of Customer Success at Forcepoint
lori_dinardo
Forum|alt.badge.img
  • lori_dinardo
  • Contributor ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
  • January 14, 2020

Hey Heather,

I see this all the time as well. I have found that if I completely remove the text from my template and re-insert, I am able to get around it. With that said, I would absolutely agree that something is fundamentally weird that we have to do that in the first place.

-Ben

2 years have gone by and I still had to use this solution to get the formatting with tokens to work properly.  At least it still works. 

lori_dinardo
Forum|alt.badge.img
  • lori_dinardo
  • Contributor ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
  • January 15, 2020

@lila_meyer  Is there a newer post because this is still a problem?  

lila_meyer
Forum|alt.badge.img+5
  • lila_meyer
  • Gainsight Employee ⭐️⭐️⭐️
  • January 15, 2020

My apologies @lori_dinardo for the confusion. I was testing an integration with the Community, but also I was wondering if we should consider the product to be working as expected  @dan_ahrens based on your comments, or if there’s a feature request here?

Lila Krutel, Dir. Global Education Services
lori_dinardo
lyne_therien
Forum|alt.badge.img+1
  • lyne_therien
  • Helper ⭐️
  • June 22, 2020

I’ve read Dan’s comments and before I go through the trouble of retype all my email templates, I’d like to know if this will solve the following problem:

 

when adding extra text into the email before sending it though email assist, the resulting font sizes are unpredictable, in the resulting email. Some text ends up with a bigger font, and it’s not even the text that I manually added!

 

Thanks!
Lyne

kelly
Forum|alt.badge.img+3
  • kelly
  • Helper ⭐️⭐️⭐️
  • August 20, 2020

No, ever since they changed to the new editor, the bloated html and behavior of the text is 100x worse. Half my day creating a template now is spent on removing the junk code that causes the unpredictable rendering of the text. And no, I’m not pasting from word, I type directly in the editor.

This is how much code is generated for 16 words - all in the same sentence! I have a support ticket highlighting this behavior but am not expecting a solution to come from it. 
 

 

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