Post date: Apr 16, 2015 2:38:47 PM

Fig. 1. The Exchange option in the Office 365 admin center top menu.

3. In the Exchange admin center click the mail flow option in the navigation pane (marked red in Fig. 2) and make sure that in the work pane the rules tab (marked yellow in Fig. 2) is selected.

Fig. 2. The Exchange admin center page with the mail flow rules interface visible.

4. Click the Plus icon and select Apply disclaimers… (Fig. 3).

This way the subsequent new rule popup window will already have the Apply disclaimersaction selected (clicking the Create new rule… option opens the new rule window without any preselected attributes)

Fig. 3. The list of available mail flow rules’ actions, with the Apply disclaimer action marked red.

5. In the resulting new rule window type in the name of your rule and configure the settings according to your needs.

NOTE: To get more settings’ options (e.g. exceptions, the option to prepend the disclaimer) click the More options… link at the bottom of the new rule window (Fig. 4):

Fig. 4. The More options… button available at the bottom of the new transport rule window.

In the *Apply this rule if… section select the conditions that will trigger it. You can find the list of available conditions on this TechNet page.

In the *Do the following… section the Append the disclaimer… action should already be chosen (if it is not, use the dropdown menu to select it). Now you have to enter the signature design. To do this click the Enter text… link and in the resulting specify disclaimer text popup window type in the text or HTML code of your organization-wide footer (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5. Exchange Online mail flow rules: specify disclaimer text window.

 To achieve automatic personalization, employ Exchange property variables such as Frist name, Last name, Phone number, etc. When inserting them in the code, use the %%PropertyName%% pattern. You can find the complete list of accepted properties on this TechNet page.

Next, select the preferred fallback action, which will be executed in case of problems with inserting the signature. The choices are: wrap (forward the original message as attachment and stamp the forward), ignore (send the message without a signature) or reject (don’t send the message).

HACK: You don’t have to be an html expert to create a professionally looking signature. Download one of the templates available in our free email signature template library and adjust it so that all the variables follow the %%PropertyName%% pattern. Then paste its html code in Office 365 and complete the rest of the steps from my guide.

6. The remaining rule properties have default settings, which you can keep or adjust to your needs. For more information on these settings and differences in processing based on message type go to this article.

7. Save your disclaimer rule settings by clicking Save at the bottom of the new transport rule window.

8. Test the new signature.

Limitations of the native Office 365 solution

Unfortunately there are several important things you can’t achieve using the built-in Office 365 central email signature solution. Those include:

• • Inserting the signature directly under the latest email reply or forward

  • Overwriting end-users’ existing email signatures (set up e.g. in Outlook or other clients)

  • Skipping lines which contain variables that couldn’t be updated (e.g. because the value wasn’t provided for a user)

  • Enabling users to see their email signature while writing a message

  • Saving the stamped email in users’ Sent Items folder

To achieve the above ends you have to use a 3rd party tool like Code