Documentation

Overview

This application permits to manage email signatures for corporate users and provides uniform look & feel signatures. This participates to the creation of the brand of a company.

The signature creation process is based on the following steps :

  • Creation of a company, with all the corresponding information,
  • Creation of users’ signatures, which consists in providing users informations, the email signature is generated automatically from the chosen template
  • Creation of the redirections, which permits to indicate the logo, the banner you want to use. Using redirections allows you to change images in all signature simply by updating the image on the server. No need to update manually the signatures, it’s all automatic !

Getting started

Companies

Create a company

First, input the information for the company :

  • Title : it is computed automatically. If you input something, it will be replaced by the automatic title computed by the system
  • Identity
    • Company Name (org.name) : Signature’s Corp
    • Company Logo image: Choose the image of your choice
    • Company Logo (org.logoAlt) : Generally the name of the logo so it appears if the user hasn’t allowed to display images in its mail application
    • Company Separator (org.separator) : –

  • Contact
    • Company Website (org.website): http://www.yourcompany.com
    • Company Address 1 (org.address1):
    • Company Address 2 (org.address2):
    • Company ZIP (org.zip):
    • Company City (org.zip):
    • Company Country (org.country):
    • E-mail (org.mail):
    • Website (org.website):

  • Social media
    • Twitter Id (org.twitter):
    • LinkedIn Id (org.linkedin): Don’t forget to prefix it by /company/ if necessary
    • Facebook Id (org.facebook):
  • Messages
    • Message 1 (org.message1):
    • Message 2 (org.message2):
    • Disclaimer text (org.disclaimer):
    • Baseline (org.baseline) :
    • Banner alt message (org.bannerAlt) : Eric JOHNS – Mail signature expert – Phone : +33 1 12 34 56 78 !

  • Settings
    • Service de redirection (org.redirectService): If empty, your wordpress server address followed by /emsgr/ will be used. It enables you to use external addresses with statistic and tracking features.

List all companies

By clicking on eMail Signature Generator plugin, then List all companies,, you can see all the companies recorded.

Persons (Signatures)

A signature must be recorded for each user of the organization. In fact, the signature is a set of personal information, which may come from a directory (Ldap, Active directory…) which are merged with a signature template. There is currently only one available template. In the future, you may choose among various templates or provide your own template to perfectly suit your needs.

Create a person (signature)

First, input the information for the current user :

  • Title : it is computed automatically. If you input something, it will be replaced by the automatic title computed by the system
  • Identity
    • Company: Email Signature Manager
    • Firtname (person.firtsname): Jean-Christophe
    • Lastname (person.lastname): KERMAGORET
    • Initials (person.initials): JCK
    • Photo image (person.photoSrc): choose the photo of your choice. May be an avatar but a well-looking photo is definitely better
    • Photo alt message (person.photoAlt): Jean-Christophe
    • Photo target URL (person.photoHref): http://jckermagoret.wordpress.com

  • Contact
    • E-Mail (person.mail): jck@email-signature-manager.com
    • Job Title: Founder
    • Phone (person.phone): +33 1 12 34 56 78
    • Mobile (person.mobile): +33 6 12 34 56 78

  • Social
    • Twitter (person.twitterId): @jckermagoret
    • LinkedIn (person.linkedinId): jckermagoret
    • Facebook (person.facebookId):

  • Signature
    • Sincerely: Sincerely, (or « Salutations, » or « Cheers, »…

List all persons (signatures)

By clicking on eMail Signature Manager Plugin/List all signatures, the recorded signatures are displayed:

View a signature

Click on View, the corresponding signature is displayed:

Send a signature

Click on Send the signature : the signature is sent to the recorded recipient for this signature with a mere Copy’n paste instructions which should be enough for most of the mailer applications.

For more information on configuration, please have a look at the Install and test section.

Redirections and Call To Actions

Redirections are « the icing on the cake ». For communication to be efficient, it is important to update the signature on a regular basis to communicate on new products, coming events… which may be difficult, error prone tasks, or merely time-consuming tasks for your collaborators.

To avoid such a waste of time and money, eMail Signature Manager provides redirections which permit you to directly use images stored on a server, without worrying about signature update for each of your company colleague. Changing the banner in one or thousands of signatures only requires to update the image on the server once. Which is the responsibility of your communication and/or marketing teams. Moreover, thanks to redirections, it is possible to track the views of your images or clicked urls, which correspond to « prints » and « clicks » in usual medias: you can create a real « Call to action » strategy with signatures.

Following the same logic, it is possible to redirect the URL displayed in your signatures, so it is not needed to update each signature to reflect the new target with the new URL: just change it on the server.

Signature anatomy

Here is a signature:

In a signature like the one above, you generally have:

  • three images, with links: user photo, logo and banner. Links on logo and user photo are generally automatically redirected to the target indicated in the company and user profile: no need to create explicit redirections for them
  • one or more social icons with links: twitter, linkedin, facebook (for the most used) which send you on the corresponding social network. Social icons never change, so the system use default redirections for them. Social links can be computed automatically from the user profile: no need to define explicit redirections
  • one link: it’s the same link than the logo

Redirections types

Finally, for the signature above, almost everything is automatic, except the banner redirections which must be created:

  • one image redirection for the banner
  • one link redirection for the banner

2 redirections types exist :

  • image redirections, which include href redirection (see the image as part of a call to action strategy)
  • href, or link, redirections, without images

With this system, you may override default user redirections, or company redirections, if required.

Create an image redirection

To create a redirection:

  • Click on eMailSignature Generator in the left menu
  • Click on Add a redirection

Input the following information for the redirection:

  • Title : it is computed automatically. If you input something, it will be replaced by the automatic title computed by the system
  • Communication topic:
    • Company: Select the company you are creating a redirection for
    • Communication Name: Happy New Year 2019 Banner (so you can easily differentiate from page)
    • Communication Mail Key: info@email-signature-manager.com (MUST correspond to the email of the company/service/group for the related organization. It will be automatically filled in the future, but for the moment, input the same mail than for the corresponding company)
    • User Mail Key: (if not empty, enables you to override user photo when it doesn’t correspond to the brand image you want to build)
  • Resource
    • Communication Type (type): Select image redirection for banner (which selects in background a r-i-ba (because we want to set the banner image)
    • Image (org.bannerSrc) : Click on Add an image and select the one which suits you. A banner in an email is ideally
  • Validity : if more than one redirection is valid, then only the first one will be used
    • Start: 01/01/2019
    • End: 31/01/2019
    • Enabled : click on enabled.

Create a href (or link) redirection

To create a redirection:

  • Click on eMailSignature Generator in the left menu
  • Click on Add a redirection

Input the following information for the redirection:

  • Title : it is computed automatically. If you input something, it will be replaced by the automatic title computed by the system
  • Communication topic:
    • Company: Select the company you are creating a redirection for
    • Communication Name: Happy New Year 2019 Page (so you can easily differentiate from banner image)
    • Communication Mail Key: info@email-signature-manager.com (MUST correspond to the email of the company/service/group for the related organization. It will be automatically filled in the future, but for the moment, input the same mail than for the corresponding company)
    • User Mail Key: (if not empty, enables you to override user photo when it doesn’t correspond to the brand image you want to build)
  • Resource
    • Communication Type (type): Select « Link redirection for banner » (which selects in background a r-h-ba, because we want to set the banner target url)
    • Target URL (org.bannerHref) : www.email-signature-manager.com (for example)
  • Validity : if more than one redirection is valid, then only the first one will be used
    • Start: 01/01/2019
    • End: 31/01/2019
    • Enabled : click on enabled.

List all redirections

Click on List all redirection to display all the available redirections.

Active redirections are green. Be careful, an active redirection may be overriden by another active redirection. The system currently desn’t prevent to make this mistake.

Installation

  • eMail Signature with Outlook
  • eMail Signature with Mail on Mac OS X
  • eMail Signature with Mozilla Thunderbird
  • eMail Signature with iPhone
  • eMail Signature with Android
  • eMail Signature with GMail
  • eMail Signature with Exchange/Outlook Web Access (OWA)

 

Tests

First, follow the previous instructions about configuring eMSG then your mail application.

  • Main checks
    • Configure company, signature and redirection as specified
    • Click on List all persons (signatures)
    • Click on View to display the signature of a person
    • Check each image is displayed (photo, logo and banner)
    • Click on each image (photo, logo, banner, twitter, linkedin…) to check they are valid
    • Click on each text link (corporate website) to check they are valid
  • Redirection checks
    • Disable the banner by unclicking the enabled button in the redirection validity tab
      • Create a new mail: the banner should have disappeared. Enable the banner to make it appear again
    • Update the validity period of the link redirection from 2100/1/1 to 2100/1/12
      • Create a new mail: the banner is still present but clicking on it doesn’t work anymore


Well, you see now how it works.