How to verify conditions and placeholders in imported signature rules

Problem:

You're moving email signature rules between Microsoft 365 tenants. After exporting them from an old tenant and importing them to a new tenant, you want to verify if all rules are correctly imported.

Solution:

By default, imported rules are saved as unpublished so that you can check them before you go live with them in your organization. Follow the steps below to verify the rule conditions and placeholders in your imported signature templates:

1. Verify signature templates (custom placeholders and one-click surveys)
2. Verify rule conditions

Verify signature templates (custom placeholders and one-click surveys)

Some placeholders (conditional placeholders, CodeTwo custom attributes, and placeholders used in one-click surveys) require additional configuration before they can be used in email signatures. After importing signature rules to another Microsoft 365 tenant, these placeholders will be included in your signature templates but might not work – they won't be replaced with their correct values in your signatures and will appear as plain text instead.

Follow the steps below to identify and fix such placeholders in your imported templates.

1. Sign in to the Signatures app. 
2. Find a rule that you imported and edit its signature template (the quickest way is to click on the signature preview, as shown in Fig. 1.).

Fig. 1. Opening a signature template for editing.

3. Don't change anything in the editor. Just click Apply & Close. This will start template validation. If no problems are found, the template is saved. You can now perform steps 2 & 3 for all the rules you imported.
4. If there are any problems or errors with your template, they will be listed in detail, including unrecognized/unconfigured placeholders (Fig. 2.).

Fig. 2. You are notified about any problems with your signature template as you try to save it.

5. Click Cancel to go back to the template, where you can either fix (reconfigure) these placeholders or remove them from the template. 

   Check our manual to find out how to configure:

   • conditional placeholders
   • CodeTwo custom attributes
   • one-click surveys
6. Once all your placeholders/surveys are fixed, click Apply & Close to save your changes to the template.
7. Perform steps 2-6 for all imported rules.

Verify rule conditions

Signature rules specify which users in your organization should get signatures. These rules are created based on conditions (and exceptions) that often include email addresses of specific users or groups. If you imported rules from a different Microsoft 365 tenant, perform the steps below to ensure all conditions in your rules point to users/groups that exist in your current tenant. Otherwise, some users might not get signatures from CodeTwo.

1. Sign in to the Signatures app.
2. Edit one of the rules you imported by clicking it and go to the Senders step (Fig. 3.).

Fig. 3. Accessing the Senders step in a signature rule.

3. Check the users and groups visible in the top and bottom lists (rule conditions and exceptions). If any users/groups belong to the tenant from which you exported the rule (you can tell by looking at their email addresses), you need to replace them with the corresponding users/groups from your current tenant. Start with adding users/groups from your current tenant to these lists by clicking Add > Selected users and Add > Group members (inside organization), respectively. The newly added users/groups will end up at the bottom of each list.

   If you migrated your organization to a different Microsoft 365 tenant and moved your old domain as well, you still need to perform this step. This is because users/groups defined in signature rules are identified by their unique IDs, not their email addresses. 

4. Next, remove the users/groups imported from your old tenant (as shown in Fig. 4.) so that only the corresponding users/groups from your current tenant remain on the list.

Fig. 4. Removing users and groups from a rule imported from a different Microsoft 365 tenant.

5. If there is an Azure AD filter condition added to the rule, check its settings. If this condition is built using CodeTwo custom attributes (as shown in Fig. 5.), make sure such placeholders exist in your current tenant. See how to create them

Fig. 5. This Azure AD filter condition uses the following CodeTwo custom attribute: Delegate.

6. (Cloud/server-side rules only) Go to the Recipients step and check if it includes any addresses/groups from your old tenant. If so, update them in a similar way as described in step 3 above.
7. Click Save to apply your changes to the rule (and leave it unpublished) or Save & Publish to apply the rule in your organization now.
8. Perform the same steps for all the imported rules.