branding and legal disclaimers for email
TRANSCRIPT
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
Copyright 2009 Permessa Corporation ▪ Proprietary and Confidentialwww.permessa.com ▪ +1-781-694-2200 ▪ [email protected] 2April 15, 2023
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
Copyright 2009 Permessa Corporation ▪ Proprietary and Confidentialwww.permessa.com ▪ +1-781-694-2200 ▪ [email protected] 3April 15, 2023
Sample Branded Mail
Sent from Domino Client
to GMAIL, gaining a branding
header and footer as well
as several disclaimers
Copyright 2009 Permessa Corporation ▪ Proprietary and Confidentialwww.permessa.com ▪ +1-781-694-2200 ▪ [email protected] 4April 15, 2023
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
Copyright 2009 Permessa Corporation ▪ Proprietary and Confidentialwww.permessa.com ▪ +1-781-694-2200 ▪ [email protected] 5April 15, 2023
Domino Mail Flow
Copyright 2009 Permessa Corporation ▪ Proprietary and Confidentialwww.permessa.com ▪ +1-781-694-2200 ▪ [email protected] 6April 15, 2023
Mime Formats
Copyright 2009 Permessa Corporation ▪ Proprietary and Confidentialwww.permessa.com ▪ +1-781-694-2200 ▪ [email protected] 7April 15, 2023
Branding Policy Example
Enablement, verbose comments
Specify HTML, with syntax check and
preview
Embedded GIF/JPG
Copyright 2009 Permessa Corporation ▪ Proprietary and Confidentialwww.permessa.com ▪ +1-781-694-2200 ▪ [email protected] 8April 15, 2023
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
Copyright 2009 Permessa Corporation ▪ Proprietary and Confidentialwww.permessa.com ▪ +1-781-694-2200 ▪ [email protected] 9April 15, 2023
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’?
Copyright 2009 Permessa Corporation ▪ Proprietary and Confidentialwww.permessa.com ▪ +1-781-694-2200 ▪ [email protected] 10April 15, 2023
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
Copyright 2009 Permessa Corporation ▪ Proprietary and Confidentialwww.permessa.com ▪ +1-781-694-2200 ▪ [email protected] 11April 15, 2023
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