Problem
Do you run a small business, a theatre perhaps where all of your staff have the latest show in their signature? Do you need to go around everyones PC to change this signature everytime the shows changes, then this article is for you.
Solution
I will show you how to create a 'Dynamic' email signature. Well part of it anyway. My solution is that you have all of the show details in an image, the phone and contact number just like you would on a website banner and embed this image in your signature. This image is located on the server and all you have to do to update everyones email signature/banner is to change this image on the server and have you staff close and open outlook to update to the latest image.
Obviously there is some confifuration required to set up the signature in outlook and it must be done in a specific way and this is where these instructions come in to their own
Instructions
NB: you need a server or PC that you can share this image out publicly
This method works by having outlook download an image from the server and have outlook embed it. You cannot just add an image into an email signature because outlook alters the assets location before embedding it and will create a static image, but by creating the code directely you bypass outlook's code sanitisation and as a consequence the image is always dynamically loaded from the server before embedding (download once per outlook session).
Server
- create a banner you want
- create a shared folder on your server (with appropriate permissions if you want)
\\server\Shared Files\Marketing\ - copy your banner to that location which gives the following available asset
\\server\Shared Files\Marketing\emailsignature.jpg
Create the Signature
You need to create a signature template to use for your signature. The following code is a great example of a simple email signature. You can edit this in either a text file or a html editor as long as it does not mangle the code. You might like to experiment. You will note that you can use in-line CSS to style items, you can also style the signature with outlook when the signature installed but it can make a mess of the code. The other thing to note is the image location for the banner, and this is the key to making this whole exercise working. It can never be altered with outlook, if you ever want to change this you will need to alter the code by directly editing the .htm file.
- You need to save the code below as dynamic.htm (or a suitable filename *.htm)
NB: Outlook will create the other versions of the email signature files (ie .txt and .rtf) when required - Alter the file appropriately (ie change names, image location, phone numbers)
- Save the file
The Code
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3c.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/loose.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>Dynamic Email Signature</title>
<meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<meta content="MSHTML 6.00.6000.16705" name=GENERATOR>
<style type="text/css">
.signature-style {
font-family: Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 11px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div class="signature-style">
<p>
<strong>Joe Bloggs<br>
<strong>Marketing Assistant</strong></strong><br>
<strong>Tel:</strong> 01772 1234569<br>
Twitter: <a href="http://twitter.com/twitter">My Twitter Feed</a><br>
Facebook: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/facebook">My Facebook Page</a><br>
<br>
QuantumWarp<br>
Rocky Lane<br>
Manchester <br>
MA1 1QW<br>
<br>
<strong>Box Office:</strong> 01772 123456<br>
<a href="http://quantumwarp.com/" title="QuantumWarp">QuantumWarp.com</a>
</p>
<p>
<a href="http://quantumwarp.com/"><img src="/\\server\Shared Files\Marketing\emailsignature.jpg"></a><br>
</p>
<p><em>QuantumWarp, Rocky Lane, Manchester, Lancashire MA1 1QW Company Registered No: 1234567 (England)</em></p>
</div>
</body>
</html>
NB:
- you can view the signature by opening the dynamic.htm in a web browser
- /\\server should not have the extra / in it, there is a fault with the way the code is stored in the database. should be \\server
Install the Signature into Outlook
This method will show you how to create an email signature from scratch. If you already have a corporate email it should be fairly easy for you to modify my example signature into your corporate colours and details etc..
NB: You will be required to visit everyones machine to create their dynamic email signature once.
- if you have no signatures at all, you need to create a dummy/blank signature in outlook. This creates the folders where signatures are stored.
- Place your modified signature in the following folder.
Win7 - C:\Users\{user}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Signatures - Open Outlook
- Edit the signature if required. i.e. Alter users name and phone numbers. (do not alter or edit the image)
Other Resource Identifiers
You can use several different ways to reference images in your email signature
- src="\\server\Shared Files\Marketing\emailsignature.jpg"
- src="file://///server/Shared Files/Marketing/emailsignature.jpg"
There might be more that I have not added.
Outlook 2007/2010/2013 and Newer
To be embed images in these version of outlook requires a registry change. By default outlook disables the embedding of images because there is a thought that you should be using cloud resources and links.
Conclusion
You have now created a system that allows you to have a Dynamic Email Signature for all of your staff and all you have to do is change the banner to reflect you new show or event.
NB: Remember that users have to logout of outlook and then back in again for changes in the banner to be reflected in the Signature.
Notes
- You will notice i have used a local server ( \\server ) for the storage of the image. You can use a webserver but this might cause issues with caching and security. ie Outlook might not let you use the link and also it might not embed the image because it sees it as a web resource. I have not tried this, but if you must, it might be worth a go.
- the link on the banner cannot be changed dynamically but with a bit of clever thinking you can have the next best thing.
- What i would do is put a unique URL http://quantumwarp.com/currentshow and have it always link toan article on the current show
- or you could use mod_rewrite and use it to redirect http://quantumwarp.com/abcde12345 to a specified page. With mod_rewrite you can change the URL on the fly.
- Updating the Signature Image location - as mentioned earlier you will need to edit the location manually in the dynamic.htm file in the signatures folder, but when you have done this you should delete the related signature files i.e. dynamic.txt and dynamic.rtf, outlook will recreate these from the updated .htm file when required.
- You can add multiple dynamic images using this method