Why does the Response thread default to Plain Text mode sometimes and Rich Text mode other times?

Environment:

Workspaces - Incident Editor

Issue:

When an email is sent in as plain text, the incident thread will default to plain text.

Resolution:

The state of the Rich/Plain text button depends on the state of the previous Customer thread. If the customer’s thread was created by email and the incoming email contained only text/plain content, then the default setting of the response thread will be text/plain. 

This is controlled by EGW_VISUAL_EMAIL.  If this setting is disabled, all thread states will be text.  If enabled, then the thread state is dependent on the incoming email format.

If the Customer thread comes from the Ask A Question page, although that thread input will be designated as plain text, the default formatting will be of rich text format.

Configuration Options:

If only rich text formatting is desired as the thread state for the agent, then edit the workspace and require only rich text.

• Edit workspace
• Select thread control
• Select Permissions
• Uncheck Allow toggling thread content to plain text