How to make a personal signature template including employee photos

CodeTwo Exchange Rules 2010, CodeTwo Exchange Rules 2007 2.x, CodeTwo Exchange Rules 3.x >

CodeTwo Exchange Rules can be used to add images to footers centrally at Exchange. The image added to the signature or disclaimer does not need to be static – it can be inserted based on the sender’s address just as Active Directory data is dynamically added to the signature at Exchange.

Where should the image files/photos be stored?

With CodeTwo Exchange Rules you have three options to add images to footers.

1. The images can reside at a local drive of Exchange.

2. Alternatively, you can place the image files not on Exchange local drives but instead on another server in the company that will act as a source for image files. This option is frequently used as few Exchange administrators want to clutter their servers with unnecessary data. See this article to learn more about sharing folders in the network

3. Finally, the images can be hosted on a Web server and accessed via HTTP link. However, we do not recommend using method #3 as the images may not display for some recipients in certain conditions. For example, this will occur if the recipient's mail client is set to block off external content in messages.

The addition of images from local drives and WWW servers is discussed in this article.

How to prepare the images and edit the footer template to enable employee photos in email signatures

If you want to use in your signature template user photos that will be dynamically added to the message depending on the sender, follow this procedure:

1. Go to the location where the images will be stored.

2. Name the photo image files that will be used by CodeTwo Exchange Rules according to the following name format:

<e-mail address>.<extension of the image file (JPG, JPED, TIF, PNG or GIG>

Example: simon@company.com.JPG

By doing this you will enable the application to pick the correct image based on the e-mail address of the sender. This is possible because the program is compatible with AD fields one of them being the [e-mail] field.

3. Once you prepare the image files for the users, you can compose the footer template in CodeTwo Exchange Rules. The footer template that will be used to add images dynamically will be linked to a network disk location. To link it quickly and easily, use the built–in signature editor and the picture addition option to insert a correct path into the template. Select Local picture in the editor's Ribbon, click the Browse icon, My Network Places, and choose the location where the image files are shared.

4. Choose any image from this folder and replace the email address in the name of the image for the placeholder [E-mail] because you want the image to be selected to email signatures based on the AD entry in the email field. See the example in the image below where [E-mail].JPG format is used in the template. This is the simplest way to make sure the signature template contains a correct path to the image folder so that the images are seamlessly added depending on the sender’s address.

While connecting an image that is located on a shared drive, you might get a warning message that this is not safe. Please ignore it as it is a remnant of the old version of the program.

Bear in mind that once you add the correct path the template will not display any image in the editor or in the preview mode, as the image is dynamic. The template will show a red cross at this stage (no image sign) but this is perfectly OK in this case.

5. Compose the remaining part of the signature in any way you want adding other Active Directory placeholders. Naturally, you can have more than one image assigned to one user. To prepare more than one image per user you can name them in the following format :

Image #1: <e-mail address>-1.<extension of the image file (JPG, JPEG, TIF, PNG, or GIF)>

Image #2: <e-mail address>-2.<extension of the image file (JPG, JPEG, TIF, PNG, or GIF)>

Image #3: <e-mail address>-3.<extension of the image file (JPG, JPEG, TIF, PNG, or GIF)>

This will be useful if you want to use in one email signature various graphic content that is different for each user.

Remember that the image files cannot be stored on a mapped disk i.e. the image cannot reside on X:\pictures\.The allowed location for this scenario is a network disk in the following format: \\srv01\pictures.