Integrating Web-to-Case into a Newsletter - Issues with Outlook 2007

Recently one of our users asked a question in the Salesforce Community Forums that prompted an exchange worth sharing. By the way it's a great place to post questions, we monitor the topics all the time. Here is the recent question that drives today's topic:

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POST:
Greetings.  I'd like to incorporate the web-to-case functionality into an email newsletter I'm sending out via VerticalResponse.  Most everything works well  -- just generated the HTML in SFDC, then added it into the free form email template.  Except for one thing:

 

When you click on the Submit Query button from within the email (which succeeds at creating a case in SFDC), it then launches your browser, opening to the following url:

 

Link:   (which is within the header, presumably to guide the whole web to case functionality).

 

My intention is for it to follow this code (but it does not):

 

<input type=hidden name="orgid" value="00D30000000144Y">

<input type=hidden name="retURL" value="http://www.mysite.com/thanks.html">

 

Any insights?

 

Many thanks!

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VR REPLY:

My name is Chris Carpio and I'm from VerticalResponse. I would be glad to help.

To start I'd like to state that generally HTML email best practices do not recommend the use of forms within an email itself. The reason for this is that a few email clients do not support it (specially web based clients such as Hotmail). Instead what we recommend is hosting the form on a website or landing page and providing a link within your email to that site.

However, this doesn't sound like the problem you're experiencing. If it's creating a case for you (it is submitting correctly), it's probably not a problem with the email client but something within the HTML. My guess it's something along the line of the return url (check that the path is absolute).

<input type=hidden name="retURL" value="http://www.mysite.com/thanks.html">

Shoot me an email at chris@verticalresponse.com with your VR username (which is your email address) and the name of the email campaign you're working. Also, include what type of email client you're using to test this on. I'll take a look and hopefully figure out a solution.

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POST REPLY:

Thanks for your response.  I did a little more investigation and found that hotmail may not be the only problem (not as big of deal for business users).  Turns out that Outlook 2007 seems to no longer support some advanced functions, in the name of "security."  So, my checkboxes and submit button disappear and are replaced with non-interactive text or brackets.  This is more likely to be a problem with my mailing list over time, so I've nixed the form-within-an-email idea.

Thanks for your help.