Signature editor

Open Signatures and click Edit on a template to open it in the studio. To make a new one, click New signature and pick one of ten premade layouts (see below), or choose More designs for one of eleven more designs (classic, logo first, photo card, minimal, sales with a meeting button, marketing banner, executive, legal, legal with regional disclaimers, support, startup) or the blank starter.

#The studio

• Left: the rail. Seven tabs, each opening a panel. Click the open tab again to close its panel and give the canvas more room (on phones the rail is a row of tabs and everything stacks).
  • Details: the template name, every text line in the signature (click one to edit it), Preview as and the list of variables to copy.
  • Images: the logo, photo and banner blocks, buttons to add them, and your team's uploads (click one to use it for the selected image, or to add it as a logo).
  • Social: the social links, edited right in the panel. Choose how they show: Names (the network names as text links), or icons in Brand colors (each network's own color), your Accent color, or Simple (plain glyphs in your text color). Icons are small images that work in Gmail, Outlook and Apple Mail; set their size from 16 to 32px.
  • Apps: quick tiles (Text, Logo, Divider, Button, QR code, Spacer) to drag onto the canvas or click to add below the selected block, ready-made blocks (Styled signoff, Call to action, Legal disclaimer, Banner, Green footer, Quote) and all other blocks.
  • Design: Use brand kit, font and colors, and the arrangement (stacked or a side column).
  • Layouts: the premade layouts, previewed with your own text and colors (see Approval workflow).
  • Checks: things to fix before you publish (see Approval workflow). A red number on the tab counts problems and warnings.
• Center: the canvas in a mail window. Switch between Desktop (a desktop mail window), Mobile (a phone at real 390px width, and you can edit there too) and Both (the desktop canvas next to a phone showing the exact HTML). New email / Reply previews the lighter reply version.
• Edit text in place. Double-click a name, text or disclaimer block on the canvas and type. Enter adds a line (in a name it saves), Escape cancels, clicking elsewhere keeps the change. Variables like {{full_name}} show as typed while you edit.
• Right: properties. Text, links, sizes, colors, conditions and spacing of the selected block. Colors open a color picker, or type a #rrggbb value.
• Top bar: the name (an orange dot means unsaved changes), undo / redo, and the save button with a menu (see Saving and publishing).

#Layouts: photo or logo beside the details

A template is either stacked (one column, the default) or has a side column on the left or right for a photo, logo or QR code next to the name and contact details.

• Open Design in the rail. Under Arrangement, Columns switches between Stacked, Side column on the left and Side column on the right. For side columns you also set the side column width, the gap, a thin divider line between the columns (in the accent color) and vertical alignment (top or middle).
• The side column holds the photo, logo and QR code blocks at the top of the template, up to the first other block. On the canvas they get a Side column tag. Drag a block above or below the name to move it in or out of the side column.
• If the side column ends up empty for someone (no photo in the directory, a block hidden by its condition, or hidden in replies), that person's signature simply becomes one column. Nobody gets an empty gap.
• The email HTML is a plain two-cell table with inline styles, so it looks the same in Outlook, Gmail and Apple Mail. On narrow phone screens the two columns stay side by side, so keep the side column narrow (the premade layouts fit a 480px screen).

Layouts in the rail shows every premade layout as a preview filled with your own text, links and colors. Click one to rearrange the template into one of the premade layouts but keeps what you entered: text, links, images, button labels, per-block colors, conditions and reply settings carry over to blocks of the same type, and the template keeps its colors and brand kit setting. Blocks the layout doesn't have are dropped, except disclaimers, which are always kept (locked ones unchanged). Undo brings the old arrangement back. Nothing is published until you save.

#Premade layouts

Layout	What it looks like
Classic left photo	Round photo on the left, then name, title, contacts and social links
Logo card	Brand kit logo on the left, a thin accent line, then the details
Banner bottom	Compact details with a campaign banner underneath
Compact one-line	Name, title, company and mobile on one line
Centered	Everything centered, contacts and social links in one line each
Bold divider	Big name over a thick accent bar
Photo right with meeting button	Details on the left, photo on the right, Book a meeting button to each person's {{calendar_url}}
QR meeting	QR code to each person's {{calendar_url}} beside the details
Executive serif	Georgia type and a thin rule
Green footer	Classic details with a green "consider the environment" line

#Variables

Type variables in any text field; each employee gets their own values from the directory:

Variable	Value
{{full_name}}	Display name, or first + last name
{{first_name}}, {{last_name}}	Name parts
{{job_title}}, {{department}}	From the directory
{{email}}, {{phone}}, {{mobile}}	Contact details
{{location}}	Office / location
{{city}}, {{state}}, {{country}}	City, state / region / province and country from the directory address
{{photo_url}}	Photo: an uploaded headshot, else the Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 profile photo (see the directory articles)
{{company_name}}	Your workspace name
{{company_logo_url}}, {{company_website}}	Logo and website from your brand kit (below)
{{pronouns}}, {{calendar_url}}	Filled in by employees when you unlock them (self-service)
{{custom.<attribute>}}	Any custom attribute your directory sends

Lines whose variables are all empty are hidden automatically, so nobody gets a dangling "Mobile:" label.

#Brand kit

Set your brand once under Settings → Brand kit (owners and admins): logo, website, font, text / accent / link colors and social links. A live preview shows the result before you save.

• In the studio, open Design in the rail and turn on Use brand kit. The kit's font and colors then replace the template's own (fields the kit sets are marked "(brand kit)"); anything the kit leaves empty keeps the template's value.
• Social blocks with no links filled in show the kit's social links.
• {{company_logo_url}} and {{company_website}} work in every template, with or without the toggle. The Logo first design uses them for its logo.
• The starter template and most library designs have Use brand kit on. Templates saved before the brand kit existed keep it off until you turn it on.
• When some templates don't follow the kit, Settings → Brand kit shows how many, with Use in all templates. It turns Use brand kit on in each of them as a new version (listed in the template's History, so you can restore the old one) and redeploys. Drafts waiting for approval keep what was submitted.
• Saving the kit re-renders every signature; only people whose signature actually changed are redeployed.

Brand kit values are checked like directory values: colors must be #rrggbb, the font must be one of the email-safe fonts, and logo, website and social links must be https:// links.

#QR codes

The QR code block turns a link into a scannable code (for example {{calendar_url}} to book a meeting, or your website). Set its size and an optional caption. The image is served by us, so it shows in every mail client, and the code also links to the same address.

#Images

Select an image block (or open Images in the rail) and click Upload image to add a logo, photo or banner (PNG, JPG, GIF or WebP, under 2 MB), or paste an https:// URL. Before uploading you can crop the image: drag to position it, zoom, and pick Original, Square or Wide 3:1 (photos start square). Use original skips cropping; animated GIFs are never cropped so they keep moving. Click Choose from uploads to reuse any image your team already uploaded, such as the logo or a campaign banner, without uploading it again. Other file types are rejected.

People's headshots are separate: use the {{photo_url}} variable in a photo block, and see Employee self-service for how employees and admins add a photo.

#Show a block only to some people

Any block can be limited to the people it applies to. Select the block, scroll to Show only when… and click Add a condition:

• Attribute: Location, Department, Job title, Email domain (the part after the @), or Custom attribute (then enter its key, for example cost_center).
• Operator: equals, contains, starts with, or does not equal.
• Value: the text to compare with. Matching ignores upper and lower case and surrounding spaces, the same as assignment rules.

People who don't match don't get the block at all, and no gap is left. Someone with no value for the attribute doesn't match either, except with does not equal, which they do. A condition with an empty value is ignored until you fill it in. Clear removes all of a block's conditions.

To combine conditions, click Add another condition (up to five per block) and pick Match: All of these conditions (AND) shows the block only to people who match every one, for example Location contains "Germany" and Department equals "Finance"; Any of these conditions (OR) shows it to people who match at least one, for example Location contains "Germany" or Location contains "Austria". Remove takes out one condition.

Blocks with a condition show a small conditional tag on the canvas. The preview uses a sample person, so use the Preview as boxes in Details (Location, Department, Job title, Email, plus one box for each custom attribute the template uses, such as custom.cost_center) to see the signature for someone else. Leave a box empty to keep the sample value. These boxes only change your preview, not the template.

#Regional disclaimers

Add one Disclaimer block per region and give each its own condition, for example Location contains "United Kingdom" for the UK text and Location contains "Germany" for the EU text. Put a disclaimer with no condition above them for wording everyone needs. The Legal (regional disclaimers) design (Signatures → New signature → More designs) is set up this way: edit the locations and wording to fit your offices. Locations come from your directory, so use the spelling your directory uses (a person whose location is only "Berlin" won't match "Germany"). A person who matches several conditions sees all of those disclaimers.

#Locked blocks

#Lighter signature for replies and forwards

A long signature with a banner and a legal footer on every reply gets heavy fast. Select a block and turn on Hide in replies and forwards: new emails still show the block, replies and forwards don't. Blocks marked this way show a not in replies tag on the canvas.

Use the New email / Reply switch above the canvas to preview both versions (View HTML and Copy HTML follow it). In the Reply preview, hidden blocks stay on the canvas as dashed placeholders so you can select them again. A typical compact version keeps the name, title and phone and hides the photo, logo, banner, social links and disclaimer. In the Reply preview, Make compact does this in one click: it hides every block except the name, title and contact details, and shows those three again if they were hidden. Locked disclaimers stay as they are. The new-email signature doesn't change, and Undo reverts it. Hide every block to send no signature on replies at all. A template where nothing is hidden uses the full signature everywhere.

Replies and forwards get the lighter version in Outlook (through the add-in) only. Gmail keeps a single signature per address, so Gmail users get the full signature on replies too. Outlook's own roaming signature settings are not managed by us: the add-in inserts the signature. An employee's page shows the reply version under the full one when the template has one.

Admins can lock blocks (such as a legal disclaimer) so marketing editors can't change them. A locked block's condition is locked with it: marketing editors can't change or clear it, and can't delete the block.

#Dark mode

Many people read email in dark mode. Gmail and Outlook.com invert the whole email, signature included, so it stays readable. Apple Mail and the new Outlook show the email on a dark background but keep your signature's colors, so dark text (such as the default #222222) and dark logos on a transparent background become hard to see.

• Click Dark above the canvas to preview the email on a dark background with your colors kept.
• In Design, turn on Light background in dark mode to put the signature on its own white panel with rounded corners. It looks the same in light mode, apart from a little padding, and stays readable in dark mode.
• Or pick lighter text colors. Checks notes any text color that is hard to read on a dark background while the panel is off.

#Checks

Checks in the rail lists what could go wrong in someone's inbox, most serious first. Click an item to select the block it is about.

• Problems: an empty signature, or a variable that doesn't exist (a typo such as {{job_titel}} is always empty).
• Warnings: a logo or banner without alt text (shown when images are blocked), an image wider than 600px, a non-https link (http:// images are blocked by Gmail and Outlook), and side columns or photos too wide for a 390px phone.
• Notes: variables that are empty for the previewed person (those lines are hidden for people without a value), a signature with no disclaimer, and text colors that are hard to read in dark mode (see below).

Checks never stop you from saving.

#Saving and publishing

The save button says what it will do:

• Save signature on a template that was never saved since it was created, Update signature after that. Both store a new version and re-render everyone on the template; only people whose signature actually changed are redeployed.
• Submit for approval when your workspace requires approval for your role (see Approval workflow).
• Up to date when there is nothing to save.

Press ⌘S (Ctrl+S on Windows) to save from anywhere in the studio. The arrow next to the button opens:

• Save as new template…: name it, and what is on the canvas now (unsaved changes included) becomes a separate template, which opens. It starts with version 1 in its history and nobody assigned; the template you came from stays as it was last saved. Marketing editors can't use it to change a locked disclaimer.
• Copy HTML and View HTML: the exact email-safe code for the previewed person.
• History: every saved version of this template.

#Version history

Every publish is kept. Signatures → … → History shows each version with a preview; Restore publishes an old version again as a new one (nothing is ever overwritten). If two people edit the same template, the second save is refused with a prompt to reload.

The history is a timeline, newest first. Each version lists what changed since the one before it (blocks added, removed or edited, the block order, colors and font, the layout), and Compare with shows the two versions side by side.

#Safety

Directory values are treated as untrusted: they're escaped, and links must use https:, http:, mailto: or tel:.