Enforce signature policy in Exchange 2003 using Active Directory fields

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Our organisation has decided it needs to have a standard signature block for all users based on their name, job title, contact details and office location, all of which are stored in Active Directory.

Has anyone found a neat solution for automatically generating Outlook/Exchange 2003 signatures based on Active Directory fields?

Best Answer

I'm a long time customer and fan of Exclaimer Mail Utilities.

It sits on your Exchange server and has lots of customisable rules which determine whether to apply stationary or not. I have it add to the top of all emails sent externally our corporate logo, and peoples name, job title and various phone numbers at the bottom - all pulled from Active Directory.

I've only used the support once, but they were very friendly, knowledgeable and resolved my issue very quickly.

Related Solutions

Distributing Rules to Outlook 2003 and 2007 clients

There are several ways to do this, presuming you want to create rules on the server so that they run even when the user's Outlook isn't active.

you can use the rule.dll component of the Exchange 5.5 SDK. It's really, really old, and the rules you create won't be visible or manageable through Outlook-- that may or may not be what you want.
the Outlook 2007 object model has tools for creating and managing rules, but it only works with Outlook 2007. However, the created rules will work no matter what version of Outlook the user runs.
the Outlook Redemption library includes a set of APIs for managing rules. Redemption is commercial software, but it's much easier to use than rule.dll. The author provides excellent support, and the library itself is pretty easy to use.

To deploy this centrally, your code would need to log on to a user's mailbox and create the rule; you'll also need a way to enumerate all of the mailboxes and do a few other housekeeping tasks. Should be a nice weekend project!

Add Pictures to Active Directory for Outlook Contacts

The thumbnailPhoto attribute on each user object is where you want to store this information; you can import it with the Import-RecipientDataProperty powershell cmdlet. Microsoft's example:

Import-RecipientDataProperty -Identity Ayla -Picture -FileData ([Byte[]]$(Get-Content -Path "M:\Employee Photos\AylaKol.jpg" -Encoding Byte -ReadCount 0))

The cmdlet will only upload a photo of 10KB or smaller (though the schema attribute has a rangeUpper of 100KB, so that ought the be the actual limit), so you'll probably need to normalize the images to fit that limit first.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Distributing Rules to Outlook 2003 and 2007 clients

Add Pictures to Active Directory for Outlook Contacts

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