Links In Support Manager Emails Do Not Respect Https + Mailto Problem

[dait]

I would like to report two minor issues in Support Manager emails, speaking about Blesta 3.0.3

 

 

There is this email when you reply to client's ticket, he receives mail that ends with this:

 

 

To reply to this ticket, be sure to email XXX from the address we sent this notice to. If you are a client, you may also update the ticket in our support area at YYY.

 

 

I can see two problems in this email

 

1) XXX is <a href=\"http://mailto:{ticket.department_email}\">{ticket.department_email}</a>

 

This should be (please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URI_scheme)

 

 

<a href=\"mailto:{ticket.department_email}\">{ticket.department_email}</a>

 

 

only one scheme should be used and it should be "mailto".

If this is used: http://mailto:something@somewhere.com/ then when this is clicked, browser is opened and you are about to login into webpage somewhere.com as a user "mailto", which is incorrect.

 

 

2) YYY does not respect the protocol. Its code is

 

 

<a href=\"http://{update_ticket_url}\">{update_ticket_url}</a>

 

 

here we have "http://" but in our case for example, there is not HTTP service on that address. We run it on HTTPS and hence in our case it should be

 

 

<a href=\"https://{update_ticket_url}\">{update_ticket_url}</a>

 

 

so in general, it should be something like

 

 

<a href=\"{update_ticket_scheme}://{update_ticket_url}\">{update_ticket_url}</a>

 

 

[Tyson]

Yes, the mailto link should not have the protocol prepended to it. and the second issue of using http instead of https is a non-issue. If you need to use secure http, you should specify it in the email template. But both of these are very minor issues are easily resolvable by editing the email template.

[dait]

I agree these issues are minor issues, but even your support emails contain

 

http://mailto:support@blesta.com/

And thus you are sending non-working links to your clients and you might be interested in fixing it generally for all.

 

 

As for HTTP vs HTTPS. I do not agree with you here. This is a bug regardless how a word "bug" is defined. The possibility for an easy fix does not make it non-issue, just lest severe. This is as bug as the "non-standard port bug" because Blesta by default generates invalid links. Invalid links implies bug. All these issues should be treated as bugs and resolved as other bugs. The default templates should just work, the user should not be forced to modify them if she has no need to.

 

My understanding of Blesta is not good yet, but I would suggest having PORT and SCHEME settings under company settings or something like that.

[Cody]

As for HTTP vs HTTPS. I do not agree with you here. This is a bug regardless how a word "bug" is defined. The possibility for an easy fix does not make it non-issue, just lest severe. This is as bug as the "non-standard port bug" because Blesta by default generates invalid links. Invalid links implies bug. All these issues should be treated as bugs and resolved as other bugs. The default templates should just work, the user should not be forced to modify them if she has no need to.

 

My understanding of Blesta is not good yet, but I would suggest having PORT and SCHEME settings under company settings or something like that.

 

Setting the protocol in the templates as defaulting to http is not a bug. While we strongly recommend the use of SSL certificates, we can not make that a base requirement for using Blesta. That said, users can enable requiring https in their .htaccess file as explained in the manual, which would seamlessly redirect all non-https requests to their https equivalent. If you feel that users would fail to follow links in their email simply because they are not over https, then you can certainly update the email templates to contain the correct protocol.

Making the protocol for all email templates a company setting is a worthy suggestion, and I would encourage you to post that in the feature request forum.

[dait]

The suggestion on having it as a feature request is fair enough:

 

http://www.blesta.com/forums/index.php?/topic/1188-making-the-protocol-for-all-email-templates-a-company-setting/

 

Thanks.

[Tyson]

mailto links in the Support Manager Ticket Updated email templates have been fixed in CORE-804 for v3.0.4 of Blesta.