Logo in Email Notification is distorted

[Legacy User]

Has one seen this before:

 

The screenshot below is taken from Outlook.  The logo labeled "Image File" is pasted into the email, by me, manually - it has the correct aspect ratio.  The image labeled "as seen in email" is the same logo, but inserted into a notification by CA PPM and delivered by Outlook.  If I then copy this "as seen in email" image to Paint, another Outlook message, etc, the logo reverts back to its correct aspect ratio - so, the image information isn't lost - its just distorted in the initial notification.

 

I've read on-line articles that indicate that this is the doing of Outlook.  It appears that the notification is packaging the logo in such a way that it is getting inserted into a table cell, a cell that Outlook then distorts the image to fill.  Have also read that its the DPI of the image, that it needs to be 96 DPI - if over, Outlook will shrink it and if under, Outlook will stretch it.  DPI is a rather meaningless number as its dependent on the screen resolution and/or printer settings.

 

Wondering if there is a Max Height and Max Width recommended for the image.  I could experiment, possibly for hours, to find a height and width combination for my logo image that would not get distorted by Outlook.  Would prefer to learn from someone else what the recommended values are.

 

BTW:  Was very pleased to see that "TRW" is not going away.  We are a division, now, of ZF (pronounced 'zed-ef') and our TRW branding will continue, as it is worldwide known.  Also, helps preserve our history, which is not insubstantial, being over 100 years in business.  Anyone remember the Cleveland Air Races?  The Thompson Trophy was named for the founder of Thompson Products, which became the "T" in TRW.

 

I'm not old enough to remember the air race    ...it was the Red Bull Air Racing event of the day, back then.

[C.J]

Anyone have any feedback for Dale?

 

Thanks

 

Logo in Email Notification is distorted

 

Dale Stockman May 22, 2015 1:43 PM

Has one seen this before:

 

The screenshot below is taken from Outlook.  The logo labeled "Image File" is pasted into the email, by me, manually - it has the correct aspect ratio.  The image labeled "as seen in email" is the same logo, but inserted into a notification by CA PPM and delivered by Outlook.  If I then copy this "as seen in email" image to Paint, another Outlook message, etc, the logo reverts back to its correct aspect ratio - so, the image information isn't lost - its just distorted in the initial notification.

 

I've read on-line articles that indicate that this is the doing of Outlook.  It appears that the notification is packaging the logo in such a way that it is getting inserted into a table cell, a cell that Outlook then distorts the image to fill.  Have also read that its the DPI of the image, that it needs to be 96 DPI - if over, Outlook will shrink it and if under, Outlook will stretch it.  DPI is a rather meaningless number as its dependent on the screen resolution and/or printer settings.

 

Wondering if there is a Max Height and Max Width recommended for the image.  I could experiment, possibly for hours, to find a height and width combination for my logo image that would not get distorted by Outlook.  Would prefer to learn from someone else what the recommended values are.

 

BTW:  Was very pleased to see that "TRW" is not going away.  We are a division, now, of ZF (pronounced 'zed-ef') and our TRW branding will continue, as it is worldwide known.  Also, helps preserve our history, which is not insubstantial, being over 100 years in business.  Anyone remember the Cleveland Air Races?  The Thompson Trophy was named for the founder of Thompson Products, which became the "T" in TRW.

 

I'm not old enough to remember the air race    ...it was the Red Bull Air Racing event of the day, back then.

[Anon Anon]

I'm having the same issue. It appears as though the image is being resize to 57x38, which coincidentally is in a ton of stylesheets under %niku_home%\webroot\help\en\Bookshelf_Files\HTML. If its as easy as a stylesheet change that would be great. Anyone have insight into this?

[System]

Hi Dale - Did you ever find any solution for this? Thanks, Chris

Dale Stockman wrote:

 

Has one seen this before:

 

The screenshot below is taken from Outlook.  The logo labeled "Image File" is pasted into the email, by me, manually - it has the correct aspect ratio.  The image labeled "as seen in email" is the same logo, but inserted into a notification by CA PPM and delivered by Outlook.  If I then copy this "as seen in email" image to Paint, another Outlook message, etc, the logo reverts back to its correct aspect ratio - so, the image information isn't lost - its just distorted in the initial notification.

 

I've read on-line articles that indicate that this is the doing of Outlook.  It appears that the notification is packaging the logo in such a way that it is getting inserted into a table cell, a cell that Outlook then distorts the image to fill.  Have also read that its the DPI of the image, that it needs to be 96 DPI - if over, Outlook will shrink it and if under, Outlook will stretch it.  DPI is a rather meaningless number as its dependent on the screen resolution and/or printer settings.

 

Wondering if there is a Max Height and Max Width recommended for the image.  I could experiment, possibly for hours, to find a height and width combination for my logo image that would not get distorted by Outlook.  Would prefer to learn from someone else what the recommended values are.

 

BTW:  Was very pleased to see that "TRW" is not going away.  We are a division, now, of ZF (pronounced 'zed-ef') and our TRW branding will continue, as it is worldwide known.  Also, helps preserve our history, which is not insubstantial, being over 100 years in business.  Anyone remember the Cleveland Air Races?  The Thompson Trophy was named for the founder of Thompson Products, which became the "T" in TRW.

 

I'm not old enough to remember the air race    ...it was the Red Bull Air Racing event of the day, back then.

[Legacy User]

Hi Chris,

 

No answer, yet.  Will review with 'glenredden' - he's here to support our 14.2 upgrade.  An email image won't be our highest priority item, though.

 

Dale

[Anon Anon]

I'm working on 13.3, and I have these changes in but I need to schedule some downtime to apply them. It "should" work though. Hopefully 14.2 is the same. Again, I haven't tested this yet but here it is:

 

(This is assuming you've already replaced the default logo located at %niku_home%\webroot\ui\evolution2\images\eMailLogo.gif.... additionally, if you want to get rid of the CA Clarity PPM wording after the image, that can be found in %niku_home%\resource\messages_en.properties... look for the value set for union.ppm and set to whatever you like, or nothing).

 

1. Edit the file "%niku_home%\tomcat-app-deploy\conf\web.xml". Look for "allowedList". You'll need to add EmailTemplate.css into the list of comma separated values under <param-value>.

 

2. With that done, the stylesheet for the auto-generated emails will be publicly viewable. Next you'll need to edit "%niku_home%\webroot\ui\evolution2\css\EmailTemplate.css". At the very end of that file, insert the following:

 

img[src$='eMailLogo.gif']{

    width: 150px;

    height: 50px;

}

 

Replace the width and height with those for your custom logo and... viola! You'll need to stop/start the services to get it working. *crossing fingers for my untested solution*

[Legacy User]

Thanks Tim,

 

As this involves restarts, I will review with team to see if we can try this on our dev/test systems while upgrade scripts are running on prd.  If time isn't available, should be able to try it next week.

 

Dale

[Legacy User]

TimInNJ -

 

We've had success by adjusting our image to the pixel dims that you provided.  This was the simplest solution that worked.  Thanks for provided the dimensions - had you not done so, would have been tough to identify looking for the correct file and/or using trial and error to test for an image size that wouldn't get distorted.

 

 

Thank you!

 

Dale

[Anon Anon]

UPDATE: I made the above changes to the 13.3 environment. Normally this solution should work... Adding the stylesheet to the allowed list works and it is publically viewable. And the stylesheet code changes are probably good as well. However, my experience with HTML emails is limited. It appears as though the stylesheet isn't actually accessed when you open the message in Outlook (hence, the style changes will not apply). I suspect this is a "security feature" to prevent pulling down virus' and the like when you open an email. Accessing the messages via something like webmail "may" work (untested) but telling users they should use webmail to view the properly formatted logo? Probably not a good idea .

 

So, there are 2 courses of action: 1. Modify the new logo so it fits the old CA logo dimensions (57x38... call it a thumbnail if you like). Or 2. Hunt down the place where the email template (the HTML or some form of it) is stored and make the changes there.

 

With the second option in mind I'll do some digging to see if I can come up with something.

[Anon Anon]

Ok. I haven't given up but its time to move onto other issues. I have come up with a creative alternate solution.

 

1. Copy your new logo to something like eMailLogo2.gif or whatever you like (in the same directory with eMailLogo.gif).

2. Add the new logo image filename to the allowed list in web.xml.

3. Dump the original eMailLogo.gif file and replace it with a 1px by 1px transparent image with the same eMailLogo.gif name.

4. Here's where the "ah ha" moment comes in. If you removed the CA Clarity PPM wording in messages_en.properties (I hope you did) in its place put a normal HTML image tag pointing to eMailLogo2.gif (the REAL logo). Thus, union.ppm=<img src="http://mynikuurl.com/niku/ui/evolution2/images/eMailLogo.gif" height="50" width="150" border="0">

The double quotes don't see to cause issues...

 

Not a perfect solution. You'll still have space where the small, old CA logo resided (the transparent image is there now) bit your custom logo will display properly.

 

I hope this helped somebody.

[Anon Anon]

Sorry, I just noticed a typo, the img tag in step 4 should point to eMailLogo2.gif... the REAL logo.

[Juan A. Segovia]

Hi Tim, I'm trying this on 15.4. My only doubt here is that I do not seem to find the way to perform step 2.

 

Can you give me  hint on that? What or where do I need to modify in the file.

 

Thanks for your time.

 

Juan

[Kirubakaran.Devaprasad]

it is helpful Dale.

 

Hi All,

 

Can anyone please help on how to add custom Icon in the tab that opens newly from Ca PPM ?

 

My requirement is to keep custom Icon in the new browser tab, that open when we click on Dashboard link. The new Tab shows up jasper report. 

 

Kind Regards,

Kiru

[Legacy User]

Hi Kiru, 

 

Could you please open a new discussion on this? That would help to track the requirement and the suggestions in one separate page. Hope you can understand. 

 

Cheers!