The wrong signature is used for a shared mailbox or delegate
Whose signature Footer365 uses when someone sends from a shared mailbox, a group address or another person's mailbox, and how to get the one you want.
When someone sends from an address other than their own, Footer365 has to decide whose signature to use. Unless you choose otherwise, the signature belongs to the address the message is sent from, not to the person typing. This article explains how that plays out, and what to check when the result is not what you expected.
Footer365 makes the Sending for others page available to organisations gradually, so it may not be in your portal yet. See Early access pages and features.
What Footer365 does
| Sending from | Signature used |
|---|---|
| Your own mailbox, or one of your own aliases | Your own signature |
| A shared mailbox, such as info@ or sales@ | The shared mailbox's signature, unless you choose otherwise on Sending for others |
| A mail-enabled group address | The group's signature. A group has no job title or phone number, so those lines drop out |
| Another person's mailbox, with Send As or Send on Behalf | What you choose on Sending for others. See below |
The shared mailbox or group needs a signature rule of its own, like any other sender. If none of your rules covers it, the message goes out with no signature.
1. The shared mailbox has no rule
This is the most common cause of a shared mailbox sending with no signature.
Check: on Signature rules, select Test a rule and pick the shared mailbox itself, not the person who sends from it.
Fix: add a rule for it. Choose Specific users and pick the mailbox, or cover it with a wider rule such as All users. A rule for a group address uses Group members with that group selected. Target by department, group or domain
Shared mailboxes can have a signature without costing a seat. Shared mailboxes and seats
2. The mailbox is new and not synced yet
Check: go to Directory, then Users and groups, and search for the mailbox. If the list is showing user mailboxes only, select Clear to see shared mailboxes as well.
Fix: select Sync now. On the way out, Footer365 can look up a sender it has not seen yet, but the Outlook add-in cannot: until a sync has run, the add-in shows no signature for that address.
3. The person's own signature appeared instead
Footer365 reads who has Send As and Send on Behalf rights on each mailbox from Exchange Online once a day, with the directory sync, once mail flow is set up. It only uses a mailbox's signature for someone writing from another person's mailbox when Exchange says they may send for it.
Check: go to Account, then Sending for others. The Rights read from Exchange card says when the rights were last read. A right given in Microsoft 365 today is picked up by tomorrow's read.
With the Outlook add-in only, rights are not read, because Footer365 reads Exchange Online only with mail flow. An organisation that had mail flow before keeps the rights last read, and the add-in goes on using them. With none read, a message from a shared mailbox is treated as Send As, and someone writing from another person's own mailbox gets their own signature. Delegates, Send As and Send on Behalf
With the Outlook add-in: when someone changes the From field, the add-in switches to the signature for that address. It does this for a shared mailbox, a room or equipment mailbox, a group the person belongs to, and another person's mailbox they have Send As or Send on Behalf rights on. For anyone else's mailbox, it uses the writer's own signature rather than show one person's details to another. If your portal has an Audit log, each case is recorded as a warning naming the address.
On the way out, without the add-in: a Send on Behalf message names the person who sent it, so Footer365 can follow your choice for it. A Send As message names only the mailbox, so Footer365 signs it as the mailbox whatever you choose. Delegates, Send As and Send on Behalf
4. The signature is right in Outlook but different on the received copy
When the add-in has put a signature in the message, Footer365 does not sign it again on the way out, so what the person saw is what is sent. If the received copy differs from what was on screen, the add-in's signature was probably deleted before sending, and Footer365 then signed the message on the way out for the sending address instead. With the Outlook add-in only, a deleted signature is not added back, and the message goes without one. The signature appears twice
5. The wrong rule wins
If the shared mailbox is in a group or department that another rule targets, that rule may be higher in the list and win. Rules are checked from the top and the first match wins.
Fix: move a specific rule for the shared mailbox above the wider rule. How rules work
A rule can also make its own choice for messages sent for someone else, under Sending for someone else in the rule editor, and that choice wins over the organisation's for the mailboxes it matches.
Related
Still stuck?
Tell us what you were trying to do and what you saw. Include the sender, a recipient and roughly when a message was sent, and we can trace it.