How to add personalized email signatures to emails sent from shared mailboxes

Problem:

Emails sent from shared mailboxes, like [email protected], have a team-specific email signature added, but the signature doesn’t contain any information about the specific user who sent the email.

Solution:

If you want to add a personalized signature to a message sent from a shared mailbox, you can use a combination of client-side and server-side email signatures. The client-side signature can consist only of, for example, sender’s full name and job title. This signature is added to a message directly in an email client (either automatically or manually by users), no matter if the email is later sent from user’s personal mailbox or a shared mailbox. The server-side signature, added by taking advantage of an email signature management software (such as CodeTwo Email Signatures for Office 365 or CodeTwo Exchange Rules family of products), contains the remaining information (company logo, marketing banner, contact details, etc.) and is inserted to all messages sent from, for example, shared mailboxes. That way, the recipient gets an email with a signature containing the sender’s details as well as the team-specific information.

The procedure to set up those signatures will be different depending on your users’ email clients and which CodeTwo software you are using. Follow the links below for more information on how to:

1. Set up a personal email signature in email clients.
2. Set up an email signature template for a shared mailbox in:
   1. CodeTwo Email Signatures for Office 365,
   2. CodeTwo Exchange Rules family of products.

Set up a personal email signature in email clients

Users can create their own simple signatures by following these steps:

• Create an email signature in Outlook on the web
• Create an email signature in Outlook

After setting up a personal email signature, the signature can be added to messages automatically or manually by the user. For example, a signed reply from a shared mailbox in Outlook will look as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1. A personal email signature added to a message sent from a shared mailbox.

Set up an email signature template for a shared mailbox

The best way of managing signatures for shared mailboxes, regardless of your environment, is to create a separate signature template for each shared mailbox.

CodeTwo Email Signatures for Office 365 (server-side mode)

1. To create a signature template for a shared mailbox in CodeTwo Email Signatures for Office 365, you first need to sign in to app.codetwo.com and add a new server-side signature rule (Fig. 2.).

Fig. 2. Creating a new server-side signature rule.

2. Name the new signature rule (Fig. 3.). It’s a good practice to add a description to the rule.

Fig. 3. Providing a name and description of a signature rule.

3. Go to the Senders step, click Add>Selected senders and choose the shared mailbox for which you want to set your signature (Fig. 4.). You can choose more than one shared mailbox at a time, as long as the email signature template you will be using for this rule can be applied to all chosen shared mailboxes.

Fig. 4. Choosing a shared mailbox for the server-side signature rule.

4. Go to the Design step and click Edit signature (Fig. 5.) to access the Signature template library.

Fig. 5. Opening the Signature template library.

5. In the Signature template library (Fig. 6), choose any signature design you like.

Fig. 6. Browsing through the available signature templates.

6. Clicking a design will open a quick customization window, in which you can, for example, remove the Name and Job title sections (Fig. 7.). This will let you quickly limit the signature fields to the ones best fitting the shared mailbox signature.

Fig. 7. Selecting sections that you want to include in a signature template.

7. Once you make the necessary modifications, click Apply & Close in the signature template editor to save your template (Fig. 8.)

Fig. 8. Saving changes to the modified email signature template.

8. The signature for your shared mailbox can be previewed in the Design step (Fig. 9.).

Fig. 9. Previewing your server-side email signature template.

9. Finally, click the Save & Publish button to apply the signature rule in your organization.

If you need more information on creating a server-side signature rule, refer to this article.

After sending the email, the shared mailbox signature will be added below the personal signature inserted in an email client (Fig. 10.).

Fig. 10. A signature inserted to an email sent from a shared mailbox.

Learn more about signature modes available in CodeTwo Email Signatures for Office 365

CodeTwo Exchange Rules family of products

1. To create a signature rule for shared mailboxes in any version of CodeTwo Exchange Rules, first open the program’s Administration Panel and add a new signature-adding rule (Fig. 11.).

Fig. 11. Creating a new signature rule in CodeTwo Exchange Rules.

2. Next, go to the Conditions tab and add a condition if Sender’s email equals (the email address of your shared mailbox) (Fig. 12.). You can add more than a single shared mailbox address by adding a similar condition with the OR operator between each entry.

Fig. 12. Setting up signature rule’s conditions.

3. After specifying the rule’s conditions, go to the Actions tab, and create a template adjusted to your shared mailbox (or mailboxes) by accessing the built-in signature editor (Fig.13.).

Fig. 13. Accessing the built-in email signature editor.

The rest of email signature rule’s settings can be default. To learn more about creating email signature rules in CodeTwo Exchange Rules, visit the quick guide. The Actions tab can be used to preview how the signature template will look like in an email (Fig. 14.).

Fig. 14. Email signature preview on the Actions tab.

Once an email is sent from a shared mailbox, signature added by CodeTwo Exchange Rules will appear under the sender’s name and job title inserted in an email client (Fig. 15.).

Fig. 15. A shared mailbox signature consisting of a client-side and server-side signature.

Related articles:

• How to remove email signatures added by mobile devices
• How to prevent Outlook from adding signatures