Bootstrapping Outlook Signatures with PowerShell and Active Directory

Introduction

Our Exchange/Office365 customers have many different environments. In this article we will give an example of a way to push out the SenderGen email signature to Outlook Clients. Please adapt to your needs. Or contact us if you have a question.

Scope

These steps cover a method for Outlook native client signatures. It is a one-time setup performed by IT.

Requirements

• Powershell (Windows 7 built-in, or XP SP3 with PS 2.0 free addin from Microsoft Download Center)
• Word
• Active Directory
• Windows Server 2008 R2+

High level steps

Create your signature template in Word

1. Call it CompanyName.docx (replace CompanyName with your company name. No spaces)
2. This will be your simple text template that SenderGen can provide for your environment.
3. Enter in standard Active Directory merge fields like DisplayName, Title, Email, TelephoneNumber or others.

Save the Word file to you share location

1. \\<you_ad_domain>\NETLOGON\sig_files\CompanyName\<CompanyName>.docx

Download and modify PowerShell script

1. Here it is SetOutlookSignature.txt (save it as .ps1 file):
2. Change the variables in the heading section
3. If you need to add different fields than DisplayName, Title etc, you will need to update the script with those as well.

Push it out via Group Policy

1. Assign our script
2. Configuration -> Policies -> Windows Settings -> Scripts ->Logon
3. Select second tab, "Powershell"
4. Click "Browse" and copy your script to this location
5. This will be folder within SysVol../GUID../Scripts/Login
6. This folder is important because it will allow the script to run since it's unsigned