Deployment of Templafy Email Signature for Outlook

About this article

The deployment and appendage of the Email signature are done through the Templafy Outlook Add-in. This article only applies to Email signatures sent from Windows PCs running an on-premise version of Microsoft Outlook. 

This article is an overview of Templafy's Email Signatures deployment for Outlook in Windows PCs. It explains what it is, how does it work, what are the technical requirements, and things to consider. Sections on this article:

• What is the Templafy Outlook Add-in?
• How to distribute email signature for Outlook?
• End-user experience
• Known issues 

Prerequisites

What is the Templafy Outlook Add-in?

It is basically the client-based email signature management solution that Templafy has created to append email signatures to emails sent from Microsoft Outlook on-premise on Windows PCs. In short, it is our solution to append email signatures, campaigns, and disclaimers. 

Email Signatures are managed via the Templafy Email Signature Manager and the signature of the user will be appended to the body of the email. It appends email signatures, campaigns, and disclaimers to emails before they are sent, and the email signature can be seen when composing the mail.  

How to distribute email signature for Outlook?

The installation is usually in current user context. The Templafy msi package, which will install the add-in, is designed from the ground up to be installed by end-users. It does not require Admin rights, nor any configuration or special setup steps. Any Windows user will be able to install it, without support or guidance. But it can also be in local machine context.

If it is to be installed in a Citrix environment, it will be necessary to install Templafy in local machine context.

1. The VSTO Add-in files are distributed to the end-user PC by Templafy Desktop. Templafy Desktop Client is an MSI package that is deployed by the client IT to the end-user.
   
   
2. When this package is executed, it will download the Outlook Add-in files and distribute them to the PC. Thereafter, the Add-in gets installed in the user’s machine.
   
   
3. Once the Add-in has been installed, it will proceed to download the Email signature and its respective HTML files and save them in a specific folder of the user's PC. 
   
   
4. When the user is about to compose an email, the Templafy Outlook add-in retrieves the signature from the folder and appends it to the body of the email. 
   
   
5. In case of updates, or changes, or new signatures, the email signature for the end-user will be updated

End-user experience

At the first login to their PC, and Templafy Desktop has been installed, the user will be met by the Templafy onboarding flow in which they will be asked to complete/approve their User Profile. The User Profile will be used to populate the email signature fields for that user.

Following that, they will be shown a preview of their email signature and automatically set it as the default email signature. 

Known issues 

If the users do not get an email signature installed in Outlook it can be if:

• The user has not completed the onboarding flow, and there will be no valid user profile. As such, no email signature can be created. The users will be prompted with the onboarding flow each time they log in until they complete it. 
• Templafy Desktop client is not installed for that user.
• There is no email signature set as active in the admin interface.
• The user is not part of the AD group who is set to receive an email signature.
• There is no email domain added in the admin interface or the user is not part of the added email domain.

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