Unified Business Solutions

E-mail has become a standard form of correspondence in most businesses. Your customers need to know who they are corresponding with and how to contact you. E-mail signatures can play a key role in providing this information, setting the tone of the message and projecting your business’s image.

An e-mail signature consists of one or more lines of text that you add to the end of an outgoing e-mail message. In the Microsoft Dynamics CRM client for Outlook, you can use the standard Outlook signature feature for your e-mail message signatures. (To get to the standard Outlook signature feature, in Outlook, on the Tools menu, click Options. In the Options dialog box, the Signatures area is located on the Mail Format tab. For more information about creating Outlook signatures, see the Outlook online Help.) To have that same feature in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Web application, you can use personal, global e-mail templates to create and maintain a set of signature e-mail templates for every business situation. For example, you can create signature lines that:

•	Build brand and name recognition for you and your business
•	Provide alternate contact information for you and your business
•	Proclaim your organization’s mission statement
•	Include disclaimers and confidentiality statements
•	Up-sell or market new sales opportunities
•	Remind customers of upcoming events

Create an e-mail signature

You can create email templates in either client by going to Settings | Templates | Email Templates or by going into the Options and then the Email Templates tab. The Options for the Outlook client are found under the CRM menu bar. To ensure that the template is available in every area of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, select the Template Type : Global.

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To add links to Web sites, type the entire URL of the Web site, for example, http://www.microsoft.com. After you press the spacebar or Enter key, the link is created and formatted automatically.

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Although you cannot insert a picture or graphic into your signature line, you can include a Web-based image, for example, the logo from your company Web site. To include an image, open the Web site that contains the image in Internet Explorer, right-click the image, and then click Copy. In the Microsoft Dynamics CRM e-mail template, paste the image into the signature. When you use this template, the image appears in the recipient’s message, if they have access to the Web site that hosts the image. This method may not work for browsers other than Internet Explorer.

Use a signature

After your signature e-mail templates are set up, you can use them in most Microsoft Dynamics CRM e-mail activities, including Direct E-mail. In the Outlook client, use them in any e-mail message created from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM folders. E-mail templates are not available in Campaigns or Quick Campaigns, but they can be added to the individual e-mail activities before they are sent, if they are not sent automatically.

After you address and compose your e-mail message, but before you save or send it, select which signature e-mail template to include.

1.	In an open e-mail activity, in the body of the message, place your pointer where you want the e-mail signature to appear.
2.	On the Formatting toolbar, click Insert Template.
3.	Select the signature e-mail template you want, and then click OK.

Your signature appears in the body of your e-mail message. Before sending the message, you can modify or add another signature e-mail template. Also, verify that the Subject of your message has not changed. Microsoft Dynamics CRM sometimes updates the Subject based on the selected e-mail template.

E-mail signatures ensure that your customers know exactly who is contacting them and give your correspondence a professional edge.

Other things to note are:
1. If you are in a CRM Record in the Outlook client and you click the Send Email button it will use the CRM email and then you can access the templates.
2. In the Outlook client if you go to New Activity on either the CRM Menu or CRM tool bar and select Email as seen below:

It will open an Outlook Email as if you open a regular Outlook email and then you can use the Track in CRM option to associate it with the correct Account (see below)

If you have the “Use CRM forms” for emails check in the General tab of the options you will get a CRM email box as seen below:

 

3. If you send an Outlook email and the use the Track in CRM feature, it will pull the signature into CRM correctly.

Tags: Dynamics CRM, Outlook, Tips

This entry was posted by Ken Cada on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 12:31 pm and is filed under Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.