branding and legal disclaimers for email

Copyright 2009 Permessa Corporation ▪ Proprietary and Confidentialwww.permessa.com ▪ +1-781-694-2200 ▪ [email protected] 1April 15, 2023

Branding Outbound Email DisclaimersA Case Study for Domino

Ken GartnerDirector of Software Development

Permessa Corporation


Customer Requirements

Centralized Admin with auditable change control

Apply business-unit specific branding as MIME, even for non-Domino senders

Allow disclaimers to accumulate, with HTML, embedded images and multiple character sets

Selection based on sender identity & message properties

Must be able to enable and disable disclaimers incrementally across the user population, based on Domino Directory

Server-side Domino only Must render in mail

clients Keep live health status Troubleshooting support


Sample Branded Mail

Sent from Domino Client

to GMAIL, gaining a branding

header and footer as well

as several disclaimers


Why a Custom Implementation?

Noted Limitations of Domino Disclaimers No central control

Must replicate/maintain set of rules for each outbound server

No audit trail for changes Limited look and feel options

No branding, no embedded images, no preview Server Rules too coarse –

Multiple business units handled per server, but different disclaimers for each

Domino Mail Policies tedious to administer Person document management

Per-message control led to mail template churn


Domino Mail Flow


Mime Formats


Branding Policy Example

Enablement, verbose comments

Specify HTML, with syntax check and

preview

Embedded GIF/JPG


CD->MIME Conversion

• Before SMTP out, Router converts ‘native’ messages – Most messages are created in MIME format by Notes Client– iNotes and Agents create mail that usually is converted too

• Conversion involves special handling:– Domino disclaimers, character set mapping, font mapping,

etc, per the names.nsf configuration– Message size generally goes up by 50%– UTF-8 is generally the safer character set– Some companies (like IBM) tend to only send mail out in ‘plain

text’ format – most fidelity is lost

• Inbound messages generally stay in MIME format• Roundtrip MIME loses fidelity, sometimes gradually


MIME Tips & Tricks

When writing HTML for email, tips from the pros:

• Don’t do it – email support for HTML offers unpleasant surprises

However, HTML is colorful and expressive, so:• Leave ‘plain text’ unmodified, or at least ‘safe’, as a fallback• Use ‘old’ HTML from 1990s

– Tables, tables, tables & lightweight inline styling– Use ‘alt’, ‘title’, ‘height’ and ‘width’ tags with images

• Be careful with recipient’s screen real estate/bandwidth– Embedded images should be small in size– Keep branding header thin, for preview panes

• Test often: Outlook 2007, Gmail, Apple, Domino clients– Confirm mail, without image expansion, in clients– Would your branding cause your mail to be marked as ‘spam’?


Summary: Meeting the Goals

• A central NSF ‘policy store’ holds all branding and disclaimer rules. Protected by ACLs, there is also an audit record made for each change. Individual rules can be scoped to Sender business unit, explicit name or even Domino mailing group membership.

• A central NSF ‘health database’ tracks how each server is handling the disclaimer processing, summarizing performance and exceptions

• A mail extension (DLL) runs on the outbound Router process, consults the policy store, examines the message, applies all rules, confirms that all formats and character sets are supported and then modifies the message as necessary. All mail from clients, iNotes and agents is considered.

• An optional mail template subform is available, allowing users to explicitly disable branding for individual mail, or specify conditions (Confidential, French, etc) to select proper disclaimers


Contact Permessa

Please check our website, if you are interested to learn more about this topic or would like to learn about our products:

www.permessa.com

or call us at +1-781-694-2233

branding and legal disclaimers for email

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