How to handle special characters in the Subject field using Qlik Application Automation Mail Connector

[Bjorn_Wedbratt]

When sending emails using the Mail Connector in Qlik Application Automation, special characters in the Subject field may not be correctly formatted.

Example:

In Qlik Application Automation:

Email received:

 

Solution

The Send Mail block does not have native support for special characters in the Subject input field, but only supports UTF-8 characters.  To use special characters, a Custom Code block can be used with some PHP code to format the text string to be used by the Subject input field.

Do the following:

1. Create a Custom Code block and place it before the Send Mail block
   
2. Select the Custom Code block and make sure Language is set to PHP 7.4
3. Change one of the default inputs to "Subject" and delete the second default input
4. Paste the following code into the code block, replacing the example code
   

   $subject = $inputs['Subject'];
   $subj = addcslashes(mb_encode_mimeheader($subject, "UTF-8", "Q"), '"');
   echo $subj;
   ?>
   ​

5. Here's the final Custom Code Block
   
   
   
6. Edit the Send Mail block and set Subject input to use the output from the above Custom Code block
   
   
7. Open the Custom Code block and enter the text to be used as a subject in the mail being sent
   
   
8. Run the automation to verify special characters are being correctly formatted in the email subject
   

 

Environment

• Qlik Automate 

The information in this article is provided as-is and to be used at own discretion. Depending on tool(s) used, customization(s), and/or other factors ongoing support on the solution below may not be provided by Qlik Support.

[jalbalat]

Hi,

Although I don't have special characters and I have an error with send mail in automation: "Malformed UTF-8 characters, possibly in correctly encoded".

I have tried this solution but I have the same error.

Do you know another reason for this error?

Thanks