Email signature & disclaimer using Group Policy
I want to deploy name and address block, company logo, and disclaimer paragraph to all the workstations in the domain. I'd like to do it via group policy, but am willing to consider a script or a third-party application as well.
The deployment is a little tricky because the user name varies by workstation (or user logon).
It's also a little tricky because a separate vendor handles our Exchange server. Subsequently, I'm forced to deploy the signature on the client side rather than the server side.
The deployment is a little tricky because the user name varies by workstation (or user logon).
It's also a little tricky because a separate vendor handles our Exchange server. Subsequently, I'm forced to deploy the signature on the client side rather than the server side.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Agree entirely with Kieran.
We had a director who attached a 100KB image to his signature. That increased the average message size by about 25 times, i.e. a mailbox that should have been 200MB was in danger of becoming 5 GB if we hadn't addressed the situation.
If you can get a suitable logo that is under 10KB (this is viable), then it is workable with an effective doubling of your mailstore. Many companies actually point to an image on their websites, but this means that most e-mail clients will block the image by default.
We had a director who attached a 100KB image to his signature. That increased the average message size by about 25 times, i.e. a mailbox that should have been 200MB was in danger of becoming 5 GB if we hadn't addressed the situation.
If you can get a suitable logo that is under 10KB (this is viable), then it is workable with an effective doubling of your mailstore. Many companies actually point to an image on their websites, but this means that most e-mail clients will block the image by default.
Whenever I get asked to do this for a client, I ask them to go through their email and look at who has a logo in their signature.
No big company does - it is mainly only small businesses and designers.
A classy text based signature will look exponentially better that a brilliant graphic that only shows up half the time :)
No big company does - it is mainly only small businesses and designers.
A classy text based signature will look exponentially better that a brilliant graphic that only shows up half the time :)
I'm still agreeing :)
I never tried to imply that you weren't ;)
I wasn't implying that you were implying that either! Sounds like we have the same perspective on e-mail signatures. Now, we just need to help those directors to see it our way.... I feel a Dilbert might be appropriate!
Be a consultant, Directors trust you a LOT more ;)
I'm a consultant now (Business & Decision), but I wasn't previously :)
Still, I've worked with some pretty lame consultants in the past!
Still, I've worked with some pretty lame consultants in the past!
One more thing you can do to help is use rDirectory http://www.namescape.com
With this, users can edit their own details in active directory (name, title, phone, etc) so that exclaimer is always going to pull accurate information. The community edition will do the job, but the full editions give you a stack more features
Also, I would recommend on leaving the logo out - it will increase the size of all your outbound mail, and may flag you as a spammer.
Kieran