Browser Extensions and Plugins
Browser plugins and extensions are tools that help you work better on the web. When using them with web-based software like Fireside, however, they can have unintended consequences.
Grammarly is a Cloud Product that is not authorized for House use: https://housenet.house.gov/technology/cloud-services.
Grammarly is a browser extension that provides suggestions to improve your writing. Additionally, Grammarly also inserts HTML code into whatever webpage you are editing which causes a number of problems with Fireside in addition to being unauthorized by the house.
If you are editing a newsletter or customizing the email version of a form letter, Grammarly will insert HTML into the code of the email you are editing.
This would cause the email to be delivered in plain text (no formatting, banners, images or electronic signatures) rather than in HTML, as you would expect. Because of this, the email is significantly more likely to be automatically routed into the recipient’s spam or junk folder, based on the rules of email service providers such as Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, etc.
Three Ways to Resolve These Issues from happening in the first place:
1. Uninstall the browser extension completely.
2. Open Fireside in a private browser window (sometimes called "Incognito"), and write your email there. Private browsing disables plugins and extensions automatically, thus avoiding the problem.
3. Use a different browser (that does not have the extension or plugin installed) when customizing a newsletter or email form letter.
To ensure you have the best send rates for your newsletters, you are blocked from sending out a newsletter if we detect that the email file size is too big due to an authorized extension like Grammarly. Pop into chat to have someone at Fireside remove the Grammarly code for you so you can send out your newsletter.