Build a template with the wizard

The template wizard builds a signature template for you from a few questions. It starts from one of the designs in the template library, and as you answer, the live preview on the right redraws the signature. Nothing is created until the last step, and what it creates is an ordinary template: everything in it can still be changed in the editor.

Footer365 makes the template wizard available to organisations gradually, so it may not be in your portal yet. See Early access pages and features. Without it, New template opens the editor on an empty canvas, as described in Managing your templates.

Start the wizard

1. In the portal, go to Signatures and then Templates (open Templates).
2. Select New template.

The arrow beside New template lists the other ways to make a template: Build with the wizard, Start from the library, Duplicate a template, Start blank and, if you can manage signatures for the whole organisation, Import and backup. If you have no templates yet, the page offers the first three as cards.

Show me how on the setup guide's template step opens the wizard at its second step, with an everyday signature for any industry already chosen. See The Welcome step, the portal tour and the setup guide.

The seven steps

The steps are listed down the left. Select a step you have already reached to go back to it, or use Back. Every step has a tip beside the preview.

The designs and the preview are drawn with a sample person who has every detail filled in, so every line of a design shows. It is the same person each time you open the wizard. Above the preview, Desktop and Mobile show it at a computer's or a phone's width, Dark turns a dark email background on and off, and My details draws it with your own details from Microsoft 365 instead, if you are in your organisation's directory. Dark and My details stay as you set them when you switch between Desktop and Mobile. With My details on, a Not on your account card under the preview lists any line in the design your own Microsoft 365 account has no value for, such as a mobile number or a photo, with how many people in your organisation have one. Those lines are left out of your signature, and out of everyone else's who lacks them.

1. What is it for. Choose what the signature is for: Everyday, Client-facing, Leadership, Support and service or Marketing and events, and then your industry, or Any. Once you have chosen both, every library design that suits your answers is shown beneath, and changes as you choose. Select a design to see it in the preview. You can choose a design here, or go on to narrow them down. When no design is tagged for your industry yet, the wizard shows the designs for every industry and says so. To leave the wizard and open an empty canvas instead, select Skip the wizard and start blank.
2. Pick a look. The same designs, every one rather than a page of them, with buttons above that narrow them by shape, such as With a photo or Compact.
3. Your brand. If your organisation has brand kits, choose one and the template takes its colours, font and logo, and follows the kit when it changes; the step shows the kit's colours, locked. Otherwise upload your logo (PNG, JPEG, GIF or WebP, up to 15 MB) or choose one from your image library, and choose your colours and font. Without a logo, the design keeps its placeholder logo until you add yours in the editor. See "Your colours", below.
4. Your details. Turn each contact line in the design on or off. If you are in your organisation's directory, each line shows your own value; each also shows how many people in your organisation have one. A line a person has no value for is left out of their signature, so nothing looks broken. Lines stay where the design puts them; to move a line or add one the design does not have, use the editor afterwards. Less common lines, such as the address, are under More details.
5. Links and social. Turn on the social networks set up on Attribute mapping, add one button such as a booking link, and choose whether to show a QR code with each person's contact details. A design without a button gets one in a row of its own beneath the contact details.
6. Extras. Room for campaign banners (marked Recommended) leaves a place where a campaign you run appears, for the dates you choose. Without it, no campaign can show in this signature. It is offered only when your portal has Campaigns; without it, no room is left, and you can add a Campaign element in the editor later. A Sign-off draws words such as "Kind regards" in a handwriting style above the name. The disclaimers listed are the Footer365 library's wording; your own disclaimers on the Disclaimers page are added to messages by their own settings, not by the template.
7. Name and finish. Name the template, and use See it as to look at it as other people in your organisation, such as someone with no mobile number or no photo. Other people are offered if your role lets you view the directory. The wizard checks the signature is within Outlook's size limit of 30,000 characters; if the check cannot be made, select Check again. Select Create and open in the editor.

To stop at any point, select Close, then Leave in Leave the wizard?. Nothing has been created, so your answers are lost.

Your colours

A template has eight theme colours, the same eight the editor's Theme panel and a brand kit hold: Primary, Accent, Text, Muted, Link, Icon, Divider and Background. Step 3 shows the two most signatures need, Main colour and Text, and All eight colours shows the rest. Each colour says where it came from, such as From your logo or Goes with your logo.

When you upload a logo or choose one from your image library, the wizard reads its colours and works all eight out from them:

• Main colour (Primary, Link and Icon) is the logo's strongest colour. If it would be hard to read on white, it is darkened until it is not.
• Accent is the logo's next colour, or a darker shade of the main colour when the logo has only one.
• Text is a near-black with a little of the logo's darkest colour in it, and Muted is that lightened, still easy to read.
• Divider is a pale tint of the main colour, and Background is left as none, so the signature sits on the email's own background in light and dark mode.

Select any colour to change it: the colours found in your logo are at the top, and Any colour opens a full colour picker. You can also type a colour's hex code beside it. A colour you choose yourself is kept if you change or remove the logo. Removing the logo puts back the design's own colours, or, if you chose the main colour yourself, colours that go with it. The editor's Theme panel opens on the same colours.

Every part of the design drawn in one of its own colours takes your colour instead, including social icons and bands the designer gave a fixed colour, so nothing is left in the design's original colours. White and any other colour of the design's own stay as they are.

After you create it

The template is created in the folder the Templates list is showing, as Active, and opens in the editor, where you can change anything. See Using the signature editor.

A template is only sent once a signature rule uses it. Straight after the wizard, the editor offers Use it for everyone, and it offers it again whenever you open a template that no rule uses yet, saying "No rule uses this template yet, so nobody gets it." It opens a new signature rule for everyone, using the template and named after it, such as "Main signature for everyone", so pressing Save rule sets it up. Where your organisation has the rule wizard, it opens the wizard with the template chosen instead; see Make a rule with the wizard. Rules are tried in order and the first that matches wins, so if a rule for everyone already exists the editor names it: move the new rule above it on the Signature rules page, or put it before that rule in the wizard's order step, for the new template to be used. See How signature rules work.

Use it for everyone is offered to someone who can manage signature rules for the whole organisation. An administrator limited to part of the organisation sets up rules for their own part on the Signature rules page as usual.

Your first brand kit

When your organisation has no brand kit yet, step 3 offers Save this as your brand kit, ticked. Leave it ticked and creating the template also saves a brand kit called Main, with your logo, the eight colours shown in step 3 and your font, as your default kit, and links the template to it. Other templates and campaign banners can then use the same logo and colours, and change with the kit. See Brand kits and the image library.

The option is shown to someone who can change the brand for the whole organisation. Otherwise your logo is added to the template itself.

Related articles

• Managing your templates
• Start from the template library
• Using the signature editor
• How signature rules work