Signature Rules
Signature rules define which Outlook signature template is automatically applied for users belonging to an organizational unit, depending on the type of email being composed and the recipient's domain.
When a user creates a new email, reply, or forward in Outlook (New), primedocs evaluates the applicable signature rules for their OU and automatically inserts the matching signature.
Signature rules are configured in primedocs Desktop under Organisation → Organizational Units. Select an OU and click Signatures in the ribbon.
How Rules Are Evaluated
Rules are evaluated in the order they are listed (top to bottom). The first rule whose conditions match the current email is applied. If no rule matches, no signature is inserted automatically.
Rule evaluation is independent of the email format. Which variant of the selected template is inserted follows from the format of the draft: the HTML content for HTML emails, the plain text content for emails in «Plain text» format. Embedded images are omitted from plain-text emails.
Rules can be inherited from parent OUs. When inheritance is enabled for a child OU, the parent's rules are used as-is and no additional rules can be defined at the child level.
Rule Configuration
Each signature rule has the following settings:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | A descriptive label for the rule (for identification in the editor only). |
| Signature Template | The Outlook signature template to apply when this rule matches. |
| Active | When disabled, the rule is skipped entirely. |
| Use for new message | Apply this rule when composing a new email. |
| Use for reply | Apply this rule when replying to an email. |
| Use for forward | Apply this rule when forwarding an email. |
| Domain filter | Restrict the rule to emails where every address in the To field belongs to one of the specified domains. Leave empty to match all recipients. Separate multiple domains with commas, e.g. example.com, example-group.com. How the comparison works is described under Comparing the recipient domain. |
| Match if no recipients | When enabled, the rule also applies if there are no recipients in the To field yet. |
Comparing the recipient domain
The domain filter compares only the domain part of each recipient address, that is the part after the last @. A display name in front of the address (Doe, Jane <jane.doe@example.com>) does not matter. An entry of the filter matches when the recipient domain is the same or a subdomain of it:
| Entry in the domain filter | Matching recipients | Non-matching recipients |
|---|---|---|
example.com | someone@example.com, someone@mail.example.com | someone@notexample.com, someone@example.com.other.ch |
The entries are cleaned up before the comparison: spaces before and after the comma as well as a leading @, * or . are removed, and the comparison ignores case. example.com, @second.ch, *.third.org therefore works like example.com,second.ch,third.org. Empty entries are skipped. If the filter has no entry left after the clean-up (for example only a comma), the rule matches no recipient. A recipient without a domain part never counts as a match.
Typical Setup: Internal and External Signatures
A common configuration defines two rules per OU:
- External signature: catch-all rule without a domain filter. It applies when no rule above it matches.
- Internal signature: applies when every address in the To field belongs to the company domain or one of its subdomains (domain filter:
example.com).
Place the internal rule above the external rule so it is evaluated first.
Each user should have exactly one applicable signature rule per email type (new/reply/forward) and language. If two rules match the same conditions, the behaviour is undefined.
Inheritance
If Inherit rules is enabled on a child OU, the active rules of the nearest parent OU that has active rules are used. To define rules specific to a child OU, disable inheritance.
Campaigns and Disclaimers
The signature rules only determine which signature template is inserted. What the signature additionally contains is controlled by the template itself:
- Campaigns in Outlook (New): the signature template defines placeholders with the Campaign Fields document function, which are populated at runtime with the active campaign template. The complete flow is described under How a campaign gets into the signature. The signature rule needs no setting for this.
- Classic Outlook: the signature rules do not apply there. Which signature primedocs Desktop inserts and whether campaign and disclaimer are appended is controlled by the E-Mail Signature document function on the «Signature (classic)» template.