11/18/2014

Setting up a Corporate Signature - HowTo-Outlook

Setting up a Corporate Signature

Within a company, you usually want to control the signatures that users are using when
sending mail outside of the company. Most companies want to include at least a disclaimer
text, others want to control the amount of contact details as well and still others want to control
the entire look and feel of the signature.
Outlook offers no direct means to do this since the Signature feature in Outlook is a client
side feature and thus users can create and modify their own signature. You can lock down the
access to the Signature feature by using Group Policies but that still doesnt take away the
issue of creating/generating a standard signature in the first place and deploying it to the users.
This guide discusses the features that Exchange offers to create and manage signatures at
server level. Also, additional methods are being discussed to manage it without an Exchange
server or when using earlier versions of Exchange. Finally, an overview of 3rd party solutions is
provided for alternative solutions.
Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003
Exchange 2007
Exchange 2010
Outlook Signature deployment via scripts
3rd party solutions

Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003

Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003 do not directly offer features to set up managed signatures
and disclaimer text. A supported method is to use an SMTP transport event sink. Microsoft has
provided the required code for this in order to achieve that via Visual Basic or VBScript.

Exchange 2007
Exchange 2007 has the Transport Rules feature which you can use to set up a default disclaimer
for each outgoing email message.
1. Open the Exchange Management Console.
2. In Organization Configuration select Hub Transport and then select the Transport Rules
tab.
3. In the Actions Pane click New Transport Rule
4. Name your rule and optionally add a Comment. For instance;
Name: Corporate disclaimer
Comment: This transport rule adds a standardized disclaimer text to all outgoing emails.
5. Press Next.
6. On the Conditions screen select the following 2 conditions;
from users inside or outside the organization
sent to users inside or outside the organization
7. In the bottom pane, modify the conditions so that they read;
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Setting up a Corporate Signature - HowTo-Outlook

from users Inside the organization

and sent to users Outside the organization
Press Next.
In the Actions screen select the action;
append disclaimer text using font, size, color with separator and fall back to action if
unable to apply.
In the bottom pane you can modify the conditions to your preference.
Click on disclaimer text to set your default text.
Note that the disclaimer text is Plain Text only so you cant type HTML code. If you
want to add a link, youll have to type it in full.
Once done, press Next.
You can set any exception as you see fit. You can continue without any exceptions as well.
Press Next.
On the Create Rule screen youll see the PowerShell command that will be executed when
clicking the New button.
After pressing the New button the wizard has been completed and a summary is shown.
Assuming it completed successfully, your Transport Rule has been created and is active
now. Clicking Finish will close the New Transport Rule dialog.

Disclaimer options in Exchange 2007

Exchange 2010
Exchange 2010 also has the Transport Rules feature just as Exchange 2007 but has support for
some additional customization as well. The most notable regarding signatures is that HTML
code is now supported and that you can also use user information that has been stored in
Active Directory to construct the signature dynamically.
1. Open the Exchange Management Console.
2. In Organization Configuration select Hub Transport and then select the Transport Rules
tab.
3. In the Actions Pane click New Transport Rule
4. Name your rule and optionally add a Comment. For instance;
Name: Corporate signature
Comment: This transport rule adds a standardized signature and disclaimer text to all
outgoing emails.
5. Press Next.
6. On the Conditions screen select the following 2 conditions;
from users that are inside or outside the organization
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Setting up a Corporate Signature - HowTo-Outlook

sent to users that are inside or outside the organization, or partners

In the bottom pane, modify the conditions so that they read;
from users that are Inside the organization
and sent to users that are Outside the organization
Press Next.
In the Actions screen select the action;
append disclaimer text and fall back to action if unable to apply.
In the bottom pane you can modify the conditions to your preference.
Click on disclaimer text to insert your default disclaimer text and add variables to
include user information (see below for an overview of variables which you can use).
Note that the disclaimer text allows you to use HTML code (including in-line CSS).
This will allow you for instance to set different font size and colors for the signature
and disclaimer part, add a horizontal line, hyperlink text or include a logo.
You can use up to 5000 characters
When a Plain Text message is sent, the HTML tags are automatically stripped off.
Once done, press Next.
You can set any exception as you see fit. You can continue without any exceptions as well.
Press Next.
On the Create Rule screen youll see the PowerShell command that will be executed when
clicking the New button.
After pressing the New button the wizard has been completed and a summary is shown.
Assuming it completed successfully, your Transport Rule has been created and is active
now. Clicking Finish will close the New Transport Rule dialog.

Supported variables
You can use the following variables in your disclaimer text. When using them, place them
between %% characters.
Example: %%DisplayName%%
UserLogonName
DisplayName
FirstName
Initials
LastName

PhoneNumber
OtherPhoneNumber
HomePhoneNumber
OtherHomePhoneNumber
PagerNumber
MobileNumber
FaxNumber
OtherFaxNumber
Email

Street
POBox
City
State
ZipCode
Country

Title
Department
Manager
Office
Company

Notes
CustomAttribute1
CustomAttribute15

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Setting up a Corporate Signature - HowTo-Outlook

Disclaimer template text with HTML and variables in Exchange 2010

Outlook Signature deployment via script

If you are not using Exchange or are looking for a client (Outlook) level solution to generate
your signatures, you can do this via a script. There are various ways to do this of course but
there are a couple of common things to keep in mind when going for a custom script;
The signature has to end up in the users Signatures folder.
A single signature contains a Plain Text, HTML and Rich Text version of your template
with their corresponding file formats;
*.txt, *.htm and *.rtf
Youll need to query Active Directory via LDAP if you want to include user specific
information.
Consider how you want to update the signature. For instance;
Are you going to run the script each time at logon or only once and then users can run the
script manually via a Start Menu shortcut?
Are you going to disable access to the Signature feature via Group Policies?
Note that you cannot set the deployed signature as the default via Group Policies; this
requires an additional one-time Registry modification (see below script example for
further details).
Below youll find a sample script to help you on your way, it is not intended for use as-is.
'Option Explicit
On Error Resume Next
Dim strSigName
Dim strFullName, strTitle, strCompany, strTel, strFax, strEmail, strWeb, strCorpEmail
Dim boolUpdateStyle
'==========================================================================
' Some script variables
'==========================================================================
'
'

Name signature
strSigName = "Standard Signature"
If signature exists, overwrite (true) or leave alone (false)?
boolUpdateStyle = true

'==========================================================================
Click in the area above and press CTR+A to select all. Press CTRL+C to copy the code.
' Set some static information
Open Notepad, paste the code in the editor and save the text document as a vbs-file.
'==========================================================================
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Set generated signature as the default signature

As mentioned before, youll need to set and remove additional Registry values in order to have
Outlook use the deployed signature as the default for newly created emails and replies and
forwards.
Remove the First-Run value name from:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\<version>\Outlook\Setup
Add the NewSignature and ReplySignature value names to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\
<version>\Common\MailSettings
Their string values need to be set to the name of the signature.
After Outlook has been started, the First-Run key is being added back again and the
NewSignature and ReplySignature values are automatically being removed. When
multiple mail accounts are configured, they will all have their new and reply/forward signature
set to the ones specified in the Registry file.
The example below makes the appropriate Registry modifications for Outlook 2010 and the
signature name of Standard Signature.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\Setup]
"First-Run"=[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\MailSettings]
"NewSignature"="Standard Signature"
"ReplySignature"="Standard Signature"

3rd party solutions

If all of the above solutions do not fit your needs, not to worry! There are plenty of 3rd party
solutions available to manage corporate signatures at either Exchange or Outlook level. A short
list can be found below;
CodeTwo Exchange Rules
Supports Exchange 2000/2003 and Small Business Server 2003

CodeTwo Exchange Rules 2007
Supports Exchange 2007 and Small Business Server 2008

CodeTwo Exchange Rules 2010
Supports Exchange 2010 and Small Business Server 2011

CodeTwo Exchange Rules 2013
Supports Exchange 2013

GFI Mail Essentials (free)
Supports Exchange 2000/2003/2007/2010/2013

DisclaimIt
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Supports Exchange 2000/2003/2007/2010/2013

Symprex Mail Signature Manager
Supports Exchange 2000/2003/2007/2010/2013/Office 365

Exclaimer
Exchange 2003/2007/2010/2013

Smart-X Signature One (free)
Add-in for Outlook 2003/2007
OpusFlow Disclaimer for Outlook
Add-in for Outlook 2000/2002/XP/2003/2007
Last modified: June 21, 2013
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Microsoft and Microsoft logo's are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

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