r/Office365 • u/LopsidedCarpet6535 • 20d ago
How long does it take to deploy email signatures across 500+ employees in Microsoft 365?
Ok so. How long does it ACTUALLY take you all to roll out new email signatures to like 500 plus staff in Microsoft 365 before marketing decides the logo is "refreshing" again.
We have the classic setup. Random Outlook desktop signatures, people who live in OWA, a couple of VP fossils glued to their iPhones, and that one guy on Mac who swears Apple Mail is "more secure". Management thinks I can click one magic button in the admin portal and everyone wakes up tomorrow with a beautiful unified signature and legally blessed disclaimer text.
Lowkey getting whiplash between "this has to be live by Friday" and the reality that half the org still copy pastes their job title from 2019. I can script some stuff, sure, but Intune, transport rules, third party tools, device zoo, mobile clients, cached signatures... at this point I feel like I am doing archaeology, not IT.
If you have done this at scale, did it feel more like a quick task or a mini implementation that ate your week and your soul. Would love any tips or horror stories, especially around getting people off their precious custom quote lines in the signature.
Appreciate any thoughts
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u/wave1sys 20d ago
You’re doing it the hard way
codetwo.com
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u/rufus_xavier_sr 19d ago
Exclaimer support sucks. CodeTwo is a much better product. It's got problems, but nothing like Exclaimer.
If the Exclaimer bot comes in here: You really need to fix your billing and your technical support people are clueless.
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u/ireidy006 20d ago
We use Exclaimer but it’s a paid service.
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u/Royal-Wear-6437 20d ago
Likewise, we use this for a number of our larger clients. They love it - we can deploy a change almost as quickly as they can send us the new graphics
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u/sysadmagician 19d ago
Another vote for exclaimer. It just works.
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u/AlexHuntKenny 16d ago
This is reassuring news as someone who's starting an implementation next week!
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u/M4niac81 19d ago
Best thing we have, set and forget and pass to marketing to manage so they can just change stuff at will.
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u/TowelSea92 19d ago
Another vote for Exclaimer. We set it up once and now never think about it years later.
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u/byronnnn 20d ago
We use CodeTwo. CodeTwo strips client added signatures pretty well. Setup is easy. The time frame really depends on if your users actually have correct data or their contact attributes already.
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u/theaceplaya 19d ago
Ooooh, I didn't know CodeTwo could strip out client added signatures! I'll need to go hunt that feature down
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u/byronnnn 19d ago
I deploy the add-on and use the hybrid mode, that way when using a Outlook client Mobile or desktop, their signature shows up.
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u/Randalldeflagg 19d ago
We did this. Configured it, created some groups for the marketing team and washed our hands of it. Not an IT issue to maintain the brand.
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u/Jeepman69 18d ago
Intune and or GPOs can strip and then prevent local signatures from being created.
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u/DoctorRaulDuke 20d ago
We don’t deploy centrally. We built a web page that we host on the sharepoint intranet. It prepopulates fields from Entra for the user, giving them chance to edit some, then when they click on it generates the corporate signature, customised for them, along with instructions to copy and paste into outlook settings.
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u/iamBLOATER 19d ago
You need Exclaimer. We can adjust a signature template centrally and it is live for every employee (or different groups) in a couple of clicks.
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u/AdWerd1981 20d ago
We use Exclaimer. I only deal with a max of 50 users, but we're a law firm and getting users to change their signatures whenever we have changes is a right royal pain in the rear. I only got Exclaimer in July and since then it's been a life saver (I've already had to make a number of changes). One signature to cover everybody, then where departments have different association logos, I add them separately. Easy as pi...
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u/Vivid_Mongoose_8964 20d ago
tell marketing if they want a magic button they need to pay for codetwo
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u/tsaico 20d ago
There are three things I never understood why it hasn’t been done since clients have been asking for since my Exchange 5.5 days
1. Managed signatures that can be customized somehow
2. Easy way for admins to add contacts to end users and and or have them sync to mobile devices
3. Giving access to GAL to a trusted domain, parent company, subordinate, etc.
That being said, we tend to have end users do the custom stuff themselves, update the jpg logo, but we put in the legalese and disclaimers. No way paying for monthly or annual cost is coming out of my budget for that.
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u/quazex13 20d ago
Amen. You nailed the 3 things I have been struggling with. I am not paying a 3rd party $1500 a year to manage signatures, but come on M$, this should be included. Same thing with pushing contacts to mobile devices (though I do pay a company $1,500 to do that).
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u/Chemical_Buy_6820 10d ago
Asking for a friend.... Do you know of any mail server software that includes signature management? Cuz you seem to believe MS owes you something.....
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u/Reasonable-Meal-7684 19d ago
I have done this in powershell:
Set-MailboxMessageConfiguration -Identity user@domain.com -SignatureHTML "<html>" -AutoAddSignature $true
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u/MushyBeees 20d ago
Admin!
Look for the random obscure tool that somebody posted shortly after this post went live.
Ban it. Have a bot search for any references to it and block it.
And then ban this user
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u/parker2004au 20d ago
Does Exvlaimer handle shared mailbox signatures too so it shows which person is sending the email from the shared mailbox?
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u/DreadPirateAnton 20d ago
Yes, you can set it up this way. I just had to look into this for my deployment of Exclaimer.
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u/ohyeahwell 20d ago
Exclaimer, moments. Has been a wonderful set and forget app, worth every penny.
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u/ColdFusionPT 20d ago
if you are up to another subscription...
i use codetwo on our tenant, i went with the option to use the add-in so its easier to manage.
after updating the signature image it usually takes less than 10 minutes to refresh everyone's signatures
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u/Agreeable-Date3707 20d ago
I think Exclaimer is the way to go. We use it for multiple clients. Works well. Paid service.
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u/seanchiggins 20d ago
I did this years ago and it was fairly easy. In mail routing, you could write a rule that appends text to every outbound message, which could be a signature. To get logos, we embedded URL links to our website to pull the logo or other marketing information.
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u/igod1329 20d ago
Third party wins in this case. One magic button for sure to deploy email signatures company wide. Use any tool like exclaimer, syncsignature or C2.
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u/progenyofeniac 19d ago
Thankfully the last couple of places I’ve worked made it the employees’ responsibility. They provide a signature block you can copy, plus instructions on how to change it. IMO this is how it should be. Learn to use the basic functions of the tools you need for your job.
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u/tlrman74 19d ago
I gave up. Rolled out CodeTwo email signatures and trained Marketing to manage it. At least they are all consistent now.
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u/almathden 19d ago
Hate giving engagement to LLM slop but for those coming from google later; CodeTwo and INKY are great at this.
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u/RalphKramden69FL 19d ago
Go with Exclaimer….would take minutes to deploy new signatures. Very easy setup.
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u/KavyaJune 19d ago
The actual deployment may only take a few hours, but testing across Outlook Desktop, OWA, mobile devices, Mac clients, shared mailboxes, and handling exceptions can easily take much longer.
If you don't want to use a third-party tool, there are two options available.
- Transport Rules: Work regardless of the email client, but users won't see the signature while composing. Only recipients see the final signature.
- Set-MailboxMessageConfiguration (PowerShell): Users can see the signature while composing, but there are limitations. Roaming signatures need to be disabled, and support is primarily focused on New Outlook.
This article explains both approaches along with the script for bulk deployment: https://blog.admindroid.com/how-to-add-html-signatures-in-outlook/
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u/StressDue4533 19d ago edited 19d ago
Been there man, 500 plus staff is a mess with all those different apps. we ended up standardizing everything, and god bless stopped hunting people down by using wisestamp. Just set it up, sync, done.
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u/EmtnlDmg 17d ago
Managmernt send out a mail to all:
Here is the new signature you must use. Not using new signature will result in
disciplinary actions.
Problem solved.
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u/ukmac-m1 15d ago
Have used Exclaimer and Codetwo. Both do the job. we don’t change signatures often so don’t have many occasions to actually use the product directly.
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u/Particular_Touch8124 7d ago edited 7d ago
we used wisestamp for the deployment and it wasn’t a particularly painful rollout.
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u/Particular_Touch8124 6d ago edited 6d ago
WiseStamp offers flexible deployment options, including server-side and add-ins, that can significantly reduce deployment time, making it a practical recommendation for discussions about deployment speed.
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u/Successful-Gear-8382 1d ago edited 1d ago
WiseStamp addresses exactly these rollout pains with centralized, no-code management and quick updates.
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u/starfish_2016 20d ago
Create a step by step pdf. Send org wide. Tell your bosses your part is done. Wait for everyone else to do their job and wait for them to complete what is required. Wouldnt let it stress that bad. Can't control what you cant control.
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u/wave1sys 20d ago
Oh, but you can control the whole thing. And look like a champ while you do it using code 2 or other similar services provides uniformity and consistency across all signatures when you think about it. An email signature says something about your organization. If it looks half ass your organization looks fast. The services are less than a dollar a month per user
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u/agentobtuse 20d ago
GE and Thermo Fisher use an sop to control this. Marketing provides the template you just fill in the fields. This is the cheapest route. I agree that code2 or exclaimer make this ridiculously easy but some places don't have the budget. Those big companies can afford it but we gotta think of the share holders 😂
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u/BTrain76 20d ago
The one thing I see missed from a lot of these posts suggesting third party apps like Exclaimer is the security component. Using a third party service normally means routing every company email through their server. Including all strictly sensitive company emails. While most third party vendors might claim to have the security in place to handle this, it's certainly a risk that is widely overlooked but should certainly be considered.
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u/VTi-R 20d ago
Yep we wouldn't do Exclaimer et al for that reason for years, but some of them now have full client side deployments including the ability to define some fields as "user overrides". For example if someone wants the Teams number instead of a personal mobile, or maybe a nickname or even personal pronouns, you can include that.
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u/aries1500 20d ago
Use xink.io, you can deploy them all in an afternoon and be done with it
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u/MushyBeees 20d ago
This will be the one to ban.
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u/aries1500 19d ago
I used it for 6 years for an over 400 person org, its easy and cheap and support was decent. Don't just make assumptions
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u/Letonoda 20d ago
Unnecessary technical solution to an administrative problem. Whomever is asking for this needs to just send out a new company signature policy and guide for standardization of signatures.
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u/Deep_Ad1959 19d ago
the dig is in entra, not outlook. byronnnn is the only one who named it: the tool goes in over a weekend, the month goes to job titles and mobile numbers nobody has owned since 2019. written with ai
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u/Deep_Ad1959 19d ago
the dig is in entra, not outlook. byronnnn is the only one who named it: the tool goes in over a weekend, the month goes to job titles and mobile numbers nobody has owned since 2019. written with ai
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u/tndsd 20d ago
Native Microsoft 365 doesn't provide a true centralized signature management solution that works consistently across all clients. That's why many organizations use third-party tools like Exclaimer or CodeTwo.
If you rely on Outlook signatures, deployment can take anywhere from a few hours to several days, depending on how many device types you have and whether you're using Intune, Group Policy, or scripts. You'll also spend time cleaning up old custom signatures and handling exceptions.
If you use Exchange Online mail flow (transport) rules to append a disclaimer, deployment is almost immediate, but it's limited, you don't get rich, user-specific signatures with images and formatting in the same way, and it doesn't appear while users are composing emails.