2076569 - Manage Live Forms - Sanitize Rich Text Inputs to Remove Bad Characters - Performance Management

Users are finding bad or strange characters on forms when comments are copied and data is pasted into a form from some other program such as MS Word.

SAP SuccessFactors Performance Management

• Text containing unsupported code has been pasted into the performance form or goal plan
• Text containing unsupported code has been pasted into a goal which was cascaded to other users and pulled into performance forms
• Data was copied from other programs that can contain unsupported code. Examples are Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint

Please note the following before proceeding:

• This solution does not apply to data imported or automatically populated on the form.
• There is no way for Product Support to correct what is already in the form, all bad or corrupted characters are stored as seen and there is no way for Support to remove data from the form.

Option 1: Enable Settings to Automatically Sanitize Content Pasted into Performance Forms

When data is copied from other programs like Microsoft Word, the programs contain a version of HTML even though users doesn't see the raw code. When the data is pasted into the performance form, the unsupported code remains and places a random block of HTML (which may not have fully formed syntax) into the form XML. Since the performance form is displayed in a web browser that can only work with properly formatted HTML code, the partial code can cause various errors. While the SuccessFactors application does have built in capabilities of handling some HTML code, it is not possible to handle every possible scenario. While errors will not occur every time someone pastes content into a form, there will be times when this will break the form.

The following features are recommended to help prevent errors by stripping out detected code:

• Enable Sanitize All Rich Text Inputs in Admin Center > Tools > Application Security Feature Settings > Sanitize all rich text inputs. (Note: This setting is a Platform setting and applies to other modules in SuccessFactors that use Rich Text Editor.)
• Enable "The rich text editor cleans up text pasted from Microsoft Word (currently, this only affects pages that use common Performance Management code)" (enabled via Admin Center > Performance Management Feature Settings). This feature works with PM forms and will eliminate most of the issues introduced by bad data pasted into text fields.

Option 2: Manually Sanitize Content Pasted Into Performance Forms

Due to the free nature of HTML, it is not possible to handle every possible scenario. While the above options will prevent most issues, there will be times when copied content will cause errors in the form. When this occurs, users can manually "sanitize" inputs by following the below steps:

1. Copy the original content (usually from Word, Excel, a webpage or some other program)
2. Paste the content into Notepad (Notepad is not an HTML based editor like MS Word or Excel and will 'sanitize' text by stripping out all hidden HTML and converting it to truly plain text)
3. From notepad, select all the text > copy
4. Paste the text into the comment field of the goal plan or PM form 
5. Save
6. Reopen form and confirm that the form now properly loads

Note: In some cases forms may have become so corrupted that they cannot be fixed. In these cases, a new form will need to be launched and the old form will need to be deleted.

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