In the preview for release wave 2020 2 Microsoft is moving the signature to UI. While doing this, they have the possibility to brush up on some old tech. Almost every piece of the old Dynamics moved over has had been given at least a small upgrade, of not a total overhaul. If you want to read about my take on signature in Dynamics, head on over here.
Limitations of the old signature:
1. Personal signature only. Could not define a signature for the organization or group.
2. No images could be added
So what has changed?
Old
The old signature did not have a rich editor, and limited us to primitive text editing. Exactly like the old email editor.
If you tried to enter a picture, you would get an error message. For this example, I just wrote the text “no picture possible”.
The signature would be added to the email as expected if it was defined as default signature, but again with little formatting.
New
The new signature is available in the new UI
I added a picture of the blue color, just to demonstrate that there can be a picture in the signature.
Opening a new email will automatically add the signature as expected, but now with the picture included. 👍
Well?
Does the signature support images?
YES, it finally does.
It is stored as a Base64, so no need to consider where the actual image is stored (notes, azure, blob etc etc). Migration from system A – B would work fine.
Can we use the signature multiple users?
Well… Yes, but No.. It seems every signature is meant to be personal, but you can search for other signatures if you want to. But in regards to automatic signature added to email, you need to create one for each user.
Thoughts 🤷♂️
As of now, I could only find the signature in the Customer Service Hub, and that confuses me a bit. Why not start off by adding it to the Sales Hub. If the signatures are personal, why not let the sales people use this first. In customer service I would have thought that a organization signature would make more sense.
While this is a great update to the last signature experience, I hope they are able to add global signatures in the future for groups of users. This would make the administrative experience a little better when you have hundreds of users.
If you read my article on signatures, I provide a different way of handling the signature experience. I try to centralize the management of the signature for faster changes. The good thing is that we have both solutions available, so pick and choose what suits your need.
Maybe in the next version we might see some structural changes to the way signatures are connected to users/groups.
CRM Keeper 