KB484285: Limitations when using Distribution Services to deliver documents with HTML format

Product Owner, Principal • MicroStrategy

This article addresses the limitations when using Distribution Services to deliver documents with HTML format. This article also provides the root causes and solutions for various cases you may encounter.

Description

When using Distribution Services to deliver a document with HTML format, the Export Engine is used to generate an HTML file. The generated HTML format may have some formatting issues when opened via Outlook. The following are issues you may encounter:

In HTML subscription, the link in Edit Link does not work
Lines do not appear after running an HTML email subscription and opening the email via Outlook
Grid is cut off in the HTML subscription
Image is not scaled via HTML subscription

Case 1: In HTML subscription, the link in Edit Link does not work.

Steps to reproduce

Create a document and insert a text box.
Right-click the text box > Edit Link.
Define a hyperlink and save the document.

Create an email subscription in HTML format.
Note that the link doesn't take effect.

Why is this happening?

The Export Engine does not support links in the Edit Link functionality for email subscriptions in HTML format.

Solution

Edit the document.
Right-click the text box > Properties and Formatting > General > Navigation > Hyperlink.

Edit the hyperlink.
The link will work in HTML subscriptions.

Case 2: Lines do not appear after running an HTML email subscription and opening the email via Outlook

Steps to reproduce

Create a document and insert vertical lines. The short vertical lines display in Web.

Export the document to HTML. The short vertical lines display properly.
Create an email subscription in HTML format for the document.
After running the subscription, open the email in Outlook. The short vertical lines are not displayed.

Why is this happening?

The email provider, for example Outlook 2007, does not render the lines. Thus, the vertical lines disappear from the HTML subscription.

Case 3: Grid is cut off in the HTML subscription

A document containing a grid with many rows of data will display a scroll bar in Web for you to view all data. However, in an HTML subscription for this document, the grid is cut off and only a part of the data is displayed in the HTML output.

Document in Web: All data is shown via a scroll bar

After the document is exported to HTML, no scroll bar is available and only parts of the data are displayed.

Why is this happening

The scrollbar in a grid is not supported by HTML subscriptions.

Case 4: Image is not scaled via HTML subscription

Steps to reproduce

Create a document.
Insert an image and make the image smaller than its original size.
Make an HTML subscription.
Note that instead of keeping the customized size in Step 2, the image in the HTML is in full size. Create a document with an image. As shown in the following screenshot, the image is vertically shrunk when the document is in presentation mode in Web.
Create an email subscription in HTML format and open the email from Outlook. The image is no longer vertically shrunken.

Why is this happening?

As shown in the following screenshot, there is a setting "Use only tables to position elements in HTML (Enable for Microsoft Outlook 2007)" in Strategy Developer.

When the setting is enabled, the tables (<td>) is used to display elements in the HTML. In this case, the width and height for the image (<img>) node are not defined. This is because defining the width and height in will not scale the image.
When the setting is disabled, the width and height for an image () node are saved. When am email is opened directly from Outlook 2007, the image is not scaled. However, when viewing the email from web browser, the image is scaled.