OJS 3.1.0.1 Problem with prepared emails

[RickMath]

We recently upgraded from OJS 2.2.4 to 2.4.8 and then to 3.1.0.1

I must say the OJS 3 is a great improvement over OJS 2. Excellent work and congratulations.

I have run into a problem with Prepared emails in 3.1.0.1 I am trying to test the Review Reminders in submissions.
When I go to the Workflow then Emails I get the list with Subscription Manager as the Sender and Reviewer as Recipient for many emails.

I checked the following prepared emails in the Workflow Settings and they all contain the correct text and references.
REVIEW_REQUEST_REMIND_AUTO
REVIEW_REQUEST_REMIND_AUTO_ONECLICK
REVIEW_REQUEST_REMIND_SUBSEQUENT
Also several others. These all show the Subscription Manager as the Sender. The bodies of the emails when I edit them are correct.

I would like to send reminders to reviewers from the submission page with reviewers listed when they are overdue. When I click on send reminder in my role as Journal Editor the body of the email is blank except for a line that says Editor - Journal of … when sent by the Editor and totally blank when cliked on Send Reminder by the Section Editor.
The reviewer name and email address shows OK at top.

I cannot see a REVIEW_REMIND email in the workflow list. The email is listed in the email_templates_default table as ID 22. I do not see this key in the email_templates_default_data table. the email_templates and email_templates table have no records.

In the email_templates_default table ID 22 shows role_id 512 as the from_role and role_id 4096 as the to_role. These are roles for the Section Editor and the Author.

I have poured through the roles, user_groups and email_templates tables and I think I have the relationships figured out or at least I think so.

Interestingly when we first installed 3.1.0.1 it actually sent emails to several reviewers. I checked the email log and I guess that is a good thing but only one was a full messages as the prepared email indicated. Several others were blank.

I can send sceen shots if needed. I just need to know how to proceed to get these working and then test others.

Thanks

Rick

[asmecher]

Hi @RickMath,

The Prepared Emails section’s indicator of senders and receivers is purely informational – I think the issue has already been pointed out at role IDs for default email templates · Issue #2724 · pkp/pkp-lib · GitHub.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

[RickMath]

Alec

Thanks and I understand that the labels are incorrect. My problem is that there is not an prepared email in the list that is for REVIEW_REMIND I tried to create one and it appeared in the email_templates table.

My major problem is that when I go to a submission and try to remind a reviewer by clicking on the Remind button the body in the next page is mostly blank like this. This is from the journal editor. When I log in as a section editor the body is completely blank.

Is the something in the procedure that is not picking up the prepared email. I can create prepared emails to solve the problem but I need them to be inserted when a section editor tries to remind a reviewer. Related to this the automatic remind feature is also sending blank emails to reviewers that are late or have not responded.

Is there something I can modify to alleviate this?

Thanks and I really like 3.1!!!

Rick

[RickMath]

I just tried to submit a test document. I went through the submission process and the submission was recorded. The system sent an email that was blank with only the journal ID name JAMT in the subject line.

Also when I went to the submission I could open the Word document and see the submission details. When I clicked on Review I received a message that was “Stage not initiated”

How can the above be resolved? Also see my last post.

Thanks

Rick

[asmecher]

Hi @RickMath,

The missing email templates might be related to this comment on your other thread.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

[RickMath]

The email_templates_default_data table has 609 records with various languages.

I think that cleaned up on the last install.

What else should I look at? I have the error log from the submission attempt if you would like me to attached it as a file. It is over 100 pages.

Would you prefer that we address this here or in the other post?

Thanks

[RickMath]

OK while I was waiting I compared the email_key values in the email_templates_default table to the keys in the email_templates_default_data table. I found 55 email_key values in the email_templates_default table that were not in the email_templates_default_data table. I created a new record in the data table for REVIEW_REMIND from my old installation of 2.4.8

Other than the names of the variable that are probably different than 3.1.0.1 the email now shows up when I click on the Remind button.

Is there any way I can get the correct tables to replace these without reinstalling 3.1.0.1? I could create these my self if needed.

[asmecher]

Hi @RickMath,

The REVIEW_REMIND email template should be present in new OJS 3.1.0-1 installs, and the upgrade process should’ve taken care of adapting any changed email variables from the 2.4.x versions of your templates. I’m not sure what happened in this case. You can find the text of the English-language templates for OJS 3.1.0-1 here.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

[RickMath]

Thanks

Maybe this will help make it work. What is the best way to copy these into the database. Sorry for the ignorance but I am weary.

I just want to avoid having to to the upgrade again. My other question about the submission review is still perplexing. Do I need to post that in another topic?

As always you are extremely helpful to us users.

Rick

[asmecher]

Hi @RickMath,

Did you end up using the “Reload” tool linked above? That should take care of reloading all your email templates from the XML file. If you want to just take the text of one or two, it’s best to find them manually in the XML source also linked above.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

[RickMath]

I do not see the Reload tool. Yes I would like to try that. Maybe I am looking in the wrong place. Is is on the Github page you sent the link to?

[RickMath]

OK I found the Reload tool. I was logged in as the Journal Manager instead of the Site Administrator. It appears when logged in as the latter.

Most of the emails I needed were restored. There are four missing and these are in the email_templates_default table but not in the email_templates_default_data table. I looked in the xml file and they are not there either. The keys are

SUBMISSION_COMMENT
SUBMISSION_DECISION_REVIEWERS
REVIEW_COMPLETE
EDITOR_REVIEW

Others are not need at this time.

The REVIEW_REMINDER template now shows in a window when I click on Remind Reviewer. The result is here

The email address is correct. The red circled items are not filled in and when I send the email it is blank when received.

Related to this several test email clients consider my emails to them as spam. Is there something I can do to fix this in OJS?

OK we are partially across the bridge. We with get there with Alec the Wizard!

Thanks

Rick

[RickMath]

I found the 4 email keys listed in the last post in an old version. I created keys in 3.1.0.1 from the information.

I have tested a submission and ran into to series of issues. I requested a review and the submitter received an acknowledgement email for the submission. I also did a discussion and the submitter received a notice and replied.

I registered a new user and the user received an email confirming the registration.

Beyond that a whole series of issues appeared when I requested a review and tried to continue.

Do you want me to try to detail the series of events? I can go back and archive it all and start over so I can get a clean error log. Do you want me to post all the detail or put it in a Word document that I can send or upload?

3.1.0.1 is a great improvement!!!

Thanks Alec

Rick

[asmecher]

Hi @RickMath,

You likely won’t see anything relevant in the error log unless you encounter a dead stop (such as a blank page). Try to document each process you followed, what you expected, and what you observed, and we can try to work through them one at a time.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

[RickMath]

Thanks Alec

Also I have been able to create the email keys that were in the listed in email_templates_default table that were not in the email_templates_default_data table except for the proof, copyedit and layout emails in that we are not currently using these.

I will document a submission, a reviewer assignment and a review. The only thing that is an immediate issue is that I have a review form that transferred in the upgrade and is intact but does not show for the reviewer, I will see if it works in this pass. It is set as the review form for all journal sections.

We seem to be further across the bridge!!

Rick

[RickMath]

I have run several tests of the OJS system.

Basically set up two test accounts with author, reader and reviewer roles.

Without going into total detail and screen shots the main results are as follow.

Submitted an article text file from user 1. Uploaded file and filled in title and abstract.

User 1 received a submission acknowledgement email. Editor received copy of acknowledgement email. All information on email was correct and the submission was shown on the editor submissions page.

Selected User 2 as a reviewer. We have a review form that migrated from earlier OJS version and is correct when previewed.

On the reviewer select page a copy of the email was displayed. Note in the shot below that some of the fields in the email were not filled in with the variables. They are circled in red.

The correct dates, file and review form were shown here.

Clicking on Add Reviewer a little circle in the lower right hand corner turned for 15 to 20 minutes. Nothing happened so the form was closed using the X at the top right corner.

The reviewer did not receive an email but could see the request when logged in. (I tested with combinations of the check boxes for Reviewer Access on the Review Workflow form. Same results for each test)

The reviewer could see the assignment but the dates were not correct and the selected review form was not displayed.

Editor received confirmation from User 2 that was able to review.

When going back to editor the submission showed the reviewer and that the assignment was accepted. Interesting that the reviewer did nothing to accept the review.

The reviewer could see the submission file and open it.

From there the reviewer could record a decision without filling out the test box which was not the correct form. The decision was shown on the editor page. The editor sent an acknowledgement email to the reviewer that was receive correctly.

I can send more detail if needed but this summarizes the test pretty well.

The three major issues seem to be the reviewer request email, the dates and the correct review form.

Waiting to hear back. Thanks!!! Cannot wait to see this wonderful system work so we can get back into production.

Rick

[asmecher]

Hi @RickMath,

To chip away at a couple of these:

• In the email template view, when you see templates variables such as these…
  
  …are these replaced when the email is sent? If so, then they’re behaving as expected. These are replaced after you view the email, before it is sent. (Noted, this may not be totally intuitive.)

• When you see a spinner that continues seemingly endlessly, check your PHP error log for details. If OJS hit an error, this would also explain why the email wasn’t received.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

[RickMath]

Alec

Thanks for the response. Two items -

None of the other emails that appear in the preview window seem to exhibit this behavior. Or at least as best as I remember. I agree that if the system hung that the email would not have been sent.

When should I check the error log? While the circle is turning or after I close the page with the X?

I have other questions for later on recaptcha and the link to Ensuring a Blind Review. I know we need to rresolve this first but should I post those as separate topics?

Merry Christmas!

Rick

[asmecher]

Hi @RickMath,

Generally we replace variables with their values before showing the email, but in this case, because the reviewer selection and due date entry are done in the same interface as the email composition, it isn’t done beforehand.

As for the error message, it should be logged a second or two after the spinner starts spinning.

For the rest, yes, rather than complicating this thread, I’d suggest posting them separately.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

[RickMath]

OK I am cleaning up the error log so it is shorter as there are a lot of lines that repeat. I am almost done. I made it right after the circle spin.

Looks like it is hung up on something. Do you want me to post it or attach a file?

I will post the others in a separate topic.