Deploy signature whit gpo

[Guest]

Hey,
I want to configure our sbs server so that al the users have the same
personal signature when they send a mail.
something like username, companyname, company adres.
Can I deploy this with GPO? How can I do that?
Thanks in advance for your reactions

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Signature files for Outlook 2003 reside in the %appdata%\Microsoft\Signatures folder. There are three ways to make Outlook to use a particular signature with all accounts:

1) Apply Office Service Pack 2 (to resolve the problem discussed in MSKB article 898076) and then set the NewSignature and ReplySignature string values in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\MailSettings key to the name of the signature. This applies the signature as a policy setting, so the user won't be able to change the automatic signature (and may also be blocked from some other features on the Tools | Options | Mail Format dialog).

2) Same as #1, only set the NewSignature and ReplySignature string values in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\MailSettings key. This applies the setting as a user preference.

3) Use a script like that at http://www.outlookcode.com/codedetail.aspx?id=821 to apply the signature to each account. This is the brute force method, available if you can't apply SP2 for some reason.

Note that even if you mandate a signature with a Group Policy Object, the user can still delete the signature from the message itself, and the savvy user can edit the .rtf, .htm, and .txt files for that signature. That's why if you really want a mandatory signature, you must do it on the server; see http://www.slipstick.com/addins/content_management.htm for links to tools.


--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Guest]

Thanks Sue for your awnser.
I do heve some questions about how to change the registry settings as you
discribe.
Do I have to go to each machine and set it manually?
How do I make such a signature file that uses de username (from the AD) and
the telefone/mobile number for each specific user?
A lot of questions for something I thougt was quit simple to deploy... :-S
thanks again for any help
grtz

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

No, this isn't a simple task at all.

You can use whatever method(s) you normally would to deploy registry changes, e.g. for the Policies key, you would use GPO, creating your own ..adm file so you could manage it in the group policy editor.

There's no built-in solution for creating the type of signature files you describe. It might be done with a log-in script or some other application running on the client that reads information from AD and can save a file there, but I don't know of any existing code sample for that purpose. You might want to check, though, at some of the sites listed at http://www.outlookcode.com/d/adsi.htm

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers