Offline approval - weird characters in Outlook

[Former Member]

Hi all,

We're on SRM 5.0, Server 550, SP12.

Scenario: offline approval of Shopping Carts

After running report RBBP_NOTIFICATION_OFFAPP, approver is getting an e-mail in Outlook 2003 with some weird characters:

**START**

Â

   The following requires processing:

Â

   1 . Approve shopping cart of Shopper with value 64,78 USD

  Â

Â

Â

   Use the following link to log on to the system and carry out the approval online:

   Log on

Â

Â

   To approve or reject directly from this e-mail, select one of the following links:

Approve by E-mail  Reject by E-mail  Â

**END**

When I look at the same message in , these characters are not visible; but there seem to be spaces/blanks in those spots. Looks like Outlook is substituting spaces for some other character.

Also, there're some extra blank lines, which we would like removed.

Any ideas how to get rid of the unwanted characters and unnecessary lines, besides BAdI implementation?

Cheers,

Serguei

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Please check the foll note:

Note 1100912 - E-mail messages for work items with incorrect line break

Also,sometimes some junk characters are inserted into the offline mail if the required services(for the generation of mail ) are not active in transaction SICF.

Please see whether the following path is active in SICF:

SAP/BC/BSP/SAP/SMART_FORMS/DEFAULT.CSS

If the above service is not activated,then activate that and re-test.

Last option would be to implement the BADI BBP_OFFLINE_APP_BADI (method ~MAIL_DATA_GET) to remove the unwanted characters.

BR,

Disha.

[former_member544585 · Accepted solution]

Hi Disha,

Thank you for replying.

Note 1100912 is already in our system, since we're on SP12.

Service SAP/BC/BSP/SAP/SMART_FORMS is active in SICF. There is no service DEFAULT.CSS.

Any other ideas, besides the BAdI? Anyone come across that problem?

Cheers,

Serguei

[pvanhoove · Accepted solution]

Hello,

This looks outlook related.

Try to change the encoding when displaying the mail in Outlook: from the mail menu: view --> encoding. Select uicode (UTF8).

Rgds,

Pierre

[former_member544585 · Accepted solution]

Pierre, you're right about the Encoding!

My Outlook determines "Western European (ISO)" by default. When I switch to "Unicode (UTF-8)" for that message, the unwanted characters disappear. In the message source, I see "charset=utf-8", which means SAP is setting the encoding in the message. But for some reason Outlook is not able to determine the encoding properly. I know this may not be an SAP question, but how can we get around that problem - some setting in Outlook or on Exchange server?

Also, any thoughts on getting rid of redundant blank lines in the message?

Cheers,

Serguei

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello,

did you get a solution for your problem? I've just the same problem!

Joe

[henning_abel · Accepted solution]

Dear Serguei,

did you find a solution for the "Unicode (UTF-8)" problem within the approval mails of SRM?

THANKS in advance and best regards,

Henning

[henning_abel · Accepted solution]

Hello Joe,

did you find a solution for the "Unicode (UTF-8)" problem within the approval mails of SRM?

THANKS in advance and best regards,

Henning