(1) EXCHANGE SERVER 2007 - Disclaimer, Personal Signature in Exchange email, Footer

Creating and Editing Disclaimer Addition Rules

CodeTwo Exchange Rules Administrator (Fig.1) allows you to define rules that will add disclaimers to messages. You can create various rules that will add different disclaimers, depending on the sender's/recipient's address.

Fig.1. Main program dialog box, containing the list of defined rules.

When you run the program for the first time, you will see several predefined rules on the list. They add various disclaimers to the outgoing messages. However, they are inactive, because the checkboxes, enabling the rules are cleared.

To add a new rule, click the Add button. The new rule creation wizard will open. On the first page of the wizard, enter the name of the new rule (Fig.2). You can also enter any text, describing the rule or type of the disclaimer it adds. Once done, click the Next button.

Fig.2. General property page - rule description.

You will see another screen of the wizard (Fig.3), where you can define the senders the current rule will apply to.

Fig.3. Senders scope property page contains the list of message senders' addresses.

In the top field enter the SMTP addresses the rule will apply to. In order to match the rule to more addresses, for instance to all addresses in the same domain, you can use the asterisk (*) sign, which stands for any text. For example: *@codetwo.com will match all SMTP addresses from the codetwo.com domain, j*@codetwo.com will match all addresses in the codetwo.com domain, starting with a letter j. If you enter * in the field, the rule will apply to all senders.

In the bottom field enter all the addresses the rule will not apply to (e.g.: support.codetwo.com, tech@codetwo.com). You can also use asterisks (*) in this field. It's not mandatory to enter anything in the exceptions field - if you wish, you can leave it blank. Once you've finished, click the Next button.

The next page will display (Fig.4). Here you define the scope of recipients the rule will apply to.

Fig.4. Recipients scope property page contains the list of message recipients' addresses.

The rule will apply if at least one of the recipients of a message matches the scope. Similarly to the previous screen you can define the scope of recipients the rule will and will not apply to. In both fields you can use matching patterns (the * sign).

After clicking the Next button, you will see the next screen (Fig.5), where you can define the appearance of the disclaimers.

Fig.5. Disclaimer templates property page contains definitions of disclaimers.

The program allows you to create disclaimers in two formats - plain text, which will be appended to text messages and HTML, which will be added to HTML and RTF messages.

You can insert Active Directory variables into the disclaimers. While adding a disclaimer to the message being sent, they are automatically replaced with their corresponding Active Directory values of the sender. This allows you to create personalized disclaimers (signatures), containing the sender's personal details, such as: name, telephone number, address, etc.

To easily edit a disclaimer using the built-in editor, click Edit.

To see how the disclaimer in an outgoing mail for a certain user will look like, click the Preview button. More about previewing disclaimers...

At the bottom of this page you can see the paths to the files, containing the texts of the disclaimers. The files are automatically created at the time the disclaimer is created. If however, you already have some footers you created before in another editor, you can enter their location here.

On the next screen of the wizard you can define the way the footers will be added to the replies and forwarded messages (Fig.6).

Fig.6. Edit and forward options property page.

It's very common that they contain the text of the original message. A common issue in such case is where the disclaimer should be inserted to be always well visible and not to interfere with the discussion. You can choose from several options:


	•	Append the footer directly below your text, between the text you entered and the history of the correspondence message

	•	Always append the footer to the end of the message.

There may arise yet another issue; when you exchange correspondence, the message usually contains the quoted text of the entire conversation. In that case the disclaimer can recur several times in a message for it is added by the Exchange server each time a message is sent. To avoid the disclaimer to be added multiple times, check the Do not insert disclaimer if it already exists option.

It's a good practice to adhere to the following guidelines during the configuration:

If the footer is supposed to be a personal signature, you should:
- check the Insert disclaimer directly under the response text option
and
- uncheck the Do not insert disclaimer if it already exists option.

In this configuration the footer will always be added below the text of the reply rather than at the end of the entire correspondence.

If however, the footer is supposed to be a company disclaimer (sometimes long), you should:
- check the Insert disclaimer at the very end of the message option
and
- check the Insert disclaimer directly under the response text option.

This time the footer will be added to the end of the message only if it has not been used before.

Click the Finish button to end configuring the rule.

After clicking the Finish button, the rule will be added to the list of rules and marked as active (Fig.7). This means the rule will be added to all messages, if their sender and/or recipients are within the scope of the defined rule (Fig.3 and Fig.4).

Fig.7. Main dialog box, containing the defined footer addition rules.

If you want to change the settings of a certain rule, select it from the list and click the Edit button. If you want to disable a rule, uncheck its corresponding checkbox. If you want to permanently delete a certain rule, select it and click the Remove button.

All changes made in CodeTwo Exchange Rules Administrator, once they are saved, are immediately applied to the messages, sent via the Exchange server.

Below (Fig.8) you can see a sample message containing the footer added automatically by the Exchange server by a rule.

Fig.8. Message containing a footer added by CodeTwo Exchange Rules.

It doesn't matter what mail client is used to send a message as CodeTwo Exchange Rules is a server solution and it adds disclaimers to messages sent from all mail clients, such as: MS Outlook, OWA, PDA, SMTP clients.