Roaming signatures for Outlook

About new Microsoft Outlook roaming signatures feature

We're publishing this knowledge base article to inform Templafy clients about a recent update from Microsoft for Outlook for Windows regarding roaming of email signatures. To read the full announcement from Microsoft, please go to their official support site: Outlook roaming signatures.

Following Microsoft’s announcement of releasing the Outlook roaming signatures feature, this article will help guide you through what it is and what actions will be initiated from Templafy's side, as well as what actions are needed from client IT. 

This article will cover:

• What are roaming email signature? 
• How will this affect Email signature solution - server side
• How will this affect Email signature solution - client-side
• How to manually disable the feature
• When will this change take place?

What is roaming email signature?

The new Outlook roaming email signature feature enables users with a Microsoft 365 or Outlook.com account to sync their Outlook signature across their different devices. For instance, when you create your own Outlook signature in your Office PC 1, then this signature will also be available in Outlook in your Office PC 2, if you have one.

The first release of this feature explicitly addresses Outlook on Windows PCs. This means that Outlook online, on mobile devices and on Mac computers will not be covered by this feature initially.

In addition, this feature synchronizes the default signatures for new and reply messages for each user account.

User affected

The roaming signatures feature will be available to users on Microsoft 365 or Outlook.com so only users on Microsoft 365 will be affected. If clients host their own Exhange Server, the feature will not be applicable. 

How will this affect Email signature solution - server side

Templafy's server-side solution will not be affected by this new feature, as it will still be essential to ensure email signatures are applied to all devices (mobile, Mac and online).

How will this affect Email signature solution - client side

For our Email signature add-ins for Outlook on Windows, we will need to update the way we interact with signatures not stored in the users’ local machine. This will take place in stages which have been outlined below.

To ensure a smooth transition/distribution, following steps will take place from Templafy's side: 

1. Templafy distributes package updates to disable new Outlook roaming signature feature via Templafy Desktop
2. Templafy distributes package updates to enable new Outlook roaming signature feature and new version of Email signature add-ins for Outlook on Windows with Templafy Desktop.

As a Templafy customer, you are not required to do any actions, Templafy Desktop will automatically disable the feature with a planned update. All that is required is approval of this updated package. 

How to manually disable the feature

To temporarily disable the feature manually, the path to the registry value is:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Setup\DisableRoamingSignaturesTemporaryToggle

Setting the value to 1 will disable the feature. Administrators can choose to use its corresponding Group Policy location to the same effect:

HKEY_SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Setup\DisableRoamingSignaturesTemporaryToggle

This value is temporary, and will be deprecated once an API is published allowing software vendors and administrators to set the value of signatures.

When will this change take place?

Microsoft has published Office 365 Notification MC215017 to give the following deployment details:

• We will begin rolling this out to Microsoft 365 Monthly Channel, Targeted, in late July. (This is Insiders Slow Channel which will soon be called Microsoft Beta.)
• We expect to roll this out to the Monthly Channel, Production, in late August.

We will update this article as we come closer to the deadline.