Why do customer entries/responses/private notes added in the incident workspace default to plain text even though rich text is enabled when the incident is created via the SOAP API?

Environment:

Connect Web Services for SOAP ("SOAP API")

Resolution:

If you've found that a new customer entry, private note or response added via an incident workspace is defaulting to plain text even though rich text is enabled for the workspace, you may need to explicitly set the content type of the initial incident thread to "text/html" in your SOAP API integration's incident "create" request. This can be accomplished be setting the Incident.Threads.ThreadList.Thread.ContentType field appropriately as suggested by the following snippet from a SOAP API incident "create" request.

<ns4:Threads>
     <ns4:ThreadList action="add">
          <!-- Set the thread's content type: 1 => text/plain; 2 => text/html -->
          <ns4:ContentType>
               <ID xmlns="urn:base.ws.rightnow.com/v1_2" id="2" />
          </ns4:ContentType>
          <!-- Set the thread's entry type -->
          <ns4:EntryType>
               <ID xmlns="urn:base.ws.rightnow.com/v1_2" id="3" />
          </ns4:EntryType>
          <!-- Set the thread text -->
          <ns4:Text>This is a test</ns4:Text>
     </ns4:ThreadList>
</ns4:Threads>

Cause:

When a customer entry, private note or response is added to an existing incident via the incident workspace, it will inherit the content type (for example, plain text or rich text) that was set for the initial incident thread if the initial incident thread was created via the SOAP API. By default, the content type of an incident thread created via the SOAP API will be plain text ("text/plain") unless otherwise specified in the incident "create" request.

For more information, refer to the Core Objects section in online documentation for Connect Web Services for SOAP.