Knowledge Base

PRB: <USAGE VALUE="Email"> in a CDF Does Not Send E-mail

Article ID: 174546

Article Last Modified on 10/2/2003

APPLIES TO

Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 128-Bit Edition
Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.01 Service Pack 2

This article was previously published under Q174546

SYMPTOMS

Despite the fact that <USAGE VALUE="Email"> has been specified for a parent ITEM element in a CDF file, the subscribed user never receives the e-mail when a content update occurs.

CAUSE

Two things may cause this problem to occur: either the user did not specifically ask to receive e-mail notifications for content update when he or she subscribed to the channel, or the SMTP server was not specified correctly.

RESOLUTION

In order for channel email notifications to get sent, all three conditions have to be met:

Specify <USAGE VALUE="Email"> in your CDF file, as in this example: <CHANNEL HREF="http://example.microsoft.com" <USAGE VALUE="Email" /> </ ITEM > </CHANNEL>
When subscribing to the channel, click the Customize button and select YES when asked if you want to be notified in an e-mail message when the page has changed. (This was added as a pre-requisite to receiving e-mail in response to user complaints about receiving unwanted e-mail from sites they subscribed to. Therefore, unless the user chooses to be notified, no e-mail will be sent.)
When prompted for an e-mail address, click the Change Address button and specify the right SMTP server name. If you do not know, ask your ISP (Internet Service Provider) what server name to specify.

STATUS

This behavior is by design.

MORE INFORMATION

If all three conditions above are met, an e-mail notification is sent to the subscribed user in this format:

   Subject:   Internet Explorer Notice: <web site title>
   Message:   <site URL> Your subscription to <web site title> has been

updated. To view the subscription offline, click here: <site URL>

This message was sent by the Internet Explorer

4.0

Information Delivery Agent.

If your e-mail client is HTML-aware, then the e-mail received is the actual Web page specified in the < ITEM > tag in the CDF file.

Steps to Reproduce Behavior

Create a simple .cdf file with the following text. Save the file as Simple.CDF, and make it available on your HTTP server:

<CHANNEL HREF="http://example.microsoft.com">
   <WWITEM HREF="http://example.microsoft.com/emailthis.htm>
      <USAGE VALUE="Email" />
   </WWITEM>
</CHANNEL>

Run Simple.CDF through Xmlint.exe and Cdftest.exe (available in the Internet Client SDK under \inetsdk\bin\XMLint and \inetsdk\bin\cdftest, respectively). Verify that no errors are found in your .CDF file.
Subscribe to http://<your server name>/simple.cdf.
From the "Add Channel" wizard, click the Customize button, and when asked if you would like to get notified in an e-mail message when the page changes, select YES, click on the "Change Address" button and specify the correct e-mail address and SMTP server name to be used. Click the Finish button, and click OK to exit the Channel wizard.
The page you just subscribed to should come up full-screen in a channel window. (In the example above, Test.htm comes up full-screen.)
Modify the .cdf file to simulate a content update.
From the desktop channel bar, right-click on your newly added Simple.cdf channel, and select Update Now. This should cause your files to get downloaded again. And if changes were detected, should display a red gleam on the upper left hand corner of your channel logo. Or from Manage Subscriptions, right-click on your page, and choose Update Now. Verify that changes were detected, with the gleam on your icon, and Status set to "Updated." Note that if any of the HTMs specified as < ITEM > tags in the CDF are modified in step 6 above, instead of the CDF file, no changes are detected (that is, Status set to "Updated: No changes detected"), and therefore no gleam is displayed.
If new content is found, and assuming you specified the correct e-mail address and SMTP name, you should get an e-mail notification in your mailbox.

The information in this article also applies to e-mail notifications being sent when a user subscribes to a favorite site directly (that is, from Internet Explorer, navigating to your favorite site, and from the menu, choosing to Add to Favorites). The only time an e-mail notification is sent is if the user specifically clicks on the Customize button and asks to get notified in e-mail when content is updated.

To subscribe to a Web page directly:

Navigate to the page (preferably one you can change, so that you'll be able to see how when the page is updated, you get notified).
Select Favorites/Add to Favorites. Choose to Subscribe to the page, either to tell you when page is updated, or to download the page for offline viewing.
Click on Customize and when prompted to receive notifications via e- mail, say Yes, and click on Change Address button and specify an e-mail address and SMTP names correctly. These are important to specify here. Otherwise, no e-mail will be received.
Click Finish, and click OK out of the Add Favorites wizard.
Now make a change to the .htm page you just subscribed to.
From Internet Explorer's Favorites menu, select Manage subscriptions. Select the site you subscribed to from the list, right-click on it and choose to "Update now."
Verify that your changes were detected by noticing a gleam on the upper- left hand corner of the icon next to your page name on the Manage Subscriptions list, and Status set to "Site changed."
Check your e-mail client and look for a mail message with subject line "Internet Explorer Notice: <site URL>"...same as above

REFERENCES

Internet Client SDK documentation

Keywords: kbie500 kbchannels kbie400 kbprb kbie401 kbdsi KB174546

Microsoft KB Archive/174546

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