Configure a Disclaimer
Applies to: Exchange Server 2010 SP3, Exchange Server 2010 SP2
Disclaimers are statements, generally of a legal nature, added to e-mail messages that enter or leave a Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 organization. It's possible to apply multiple disclaimers to a single e-mail message. If a message matches more than one transport rule, and a disclaimer action is configured on each transport rule, the transport rule applies each disclaimer action to the message.
The procedure that you use to create a disclaimer is the same procedure used to create a transport rule. This is because a disclaimer is a configurable action available to transport rules on a Hub Transport server.
For information about creating disclaimers in Exchange 2013 or Exchange Online, see Add an Email Disclaimer, Legal Disclaimer, Common Signature, or Email Footer or Header.
As with transport rules, when you create a new disclaimer, you can configure conditions and exceptions to control which e-mail messages receive the disclaimer. If you want the disclaimer to apply to all e-mail messages that enter and leave the Exchange 2010 organization, don't configure any conditions or exceptions.
Important
For transport rules to be applied to e-mail messages, a route must exist that enables the message to enter and leave a server that applies transport rules. Also, the message must not be subject to an administrator-configured transport restriction that prevents delivery of the message. If a transport restriction prevents delivery of a message, the Transport Rules agent can't act on that message, and no Transport Rules agent events are logged.
Warning
To apply disclaimers, you must create or modify a transport rule. Before you modify or create transport rules in your production environment, use a test environment to test rules thoroughly. The following procedures aren't intended to be run in a production environment without modification to support your organization.
Looking for other management tasks related to transport rules? Check out Managing Transport Rules.
Prerequisites
To apply Exchange 2010 transport rules, all Hub Transport servers in the organization should be running Exchange 2010.
Use the EMC to Configure a Disclaimer
You need to be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure. To see what permissions you need, see the "Transport rules" entry in the Messaging Policy and Compliance Permissions topic.
Navigate to Organization Configuration > Hub Transport.
In the result pane, click the Transport Rules tab.
In the action pane, click New Transport Rule. On the Introduction page, complete the following fields:
Name Type a name for the transport rule.
Comment (Optional) Comments can be used to describe rule functionality and relevant details such as a change request or trouble ticket number, date, and name of an administrator. Text in the comments field has no effect on rule functionality.
Enable Rule New rules are enabled by default. If you want the rule to be created in a disabled state, clear the check box.
On the Conditions page, complete the following fields:
In the Step 1. Select Condition(s) field, select all the conditions that you want to apply to this rule.
Important
If you want this rule to be applied to all e-mail messages, don't select any conditions in this step.
In the Step 2. Edit the rule description by clicking an underlined value field, for each condition selected in the Select Conditions box, click each blue, underlined word.
When you click a blue, underlined word, a window opens to prompt you for the values to apply to the condition. Select the values that you want to apply, or type the values manually. If the window requires that you manually add values to a list, type a value. Then click Add. Repeat this process until you have entered all the values, and then click OK to close the window.
Repeat the previous step for each condition that you selected. After you configure all the conditions, click Next.
On the Actions page, complete the following fields:
In the Step 1. Select actions field, select the append disclaimer text and fallback to action if unable to apply check box.
In the Step 2. Edit the rule description by clicking an underlined value field, complete the following fields:
• Click disclaimer text. In the Specify disclaimer text dialog box, type the plaintext or HTML disclaimer text that you want to add to messages.
• (Optional) To change the position of the disclaimer in messages, click append. From the Select position dialog box, select prepend.
• (Optional) To change the fallback action, click wrap. In the Select fallback action dialog box, select the desired fallback action.
On the Exceptions page, complete the following fields:
In the Step 1. Select exceptions if necessary box, select all the exceptions that you want applied to this rule. You aren't required to select any exceptions.
If you selected exceptions in the previous step, in the Step 2. Edit the rule description by clicking an underlined value box, click each blue, underlined word.
When you click a blue, underlined word, a window opens to prompt you to select the items that you want to add, or to type the values manually. After you finish, click OK to close the window.
Repeat the previous step for each exception that you selected. After you configure all the exceptions, click Next.
Note
If you don't apply an exception to this transport rule and all the transport rule conditions are met, a disclaimer is added to every message. The append disclaimer text and fallback to action if unable to apply action doesn't verify that a disclaimer has already been applied to a message. To avoid having a disclaimer text added repeatedly to messages that meet the conditions of this transport rule, add the except when the Subject field or message body contains specific words exception, and then edit the specific words value to include text that's unique to the disclaimer you created.
On the Create Rule page, review the Configuration Summary. If you're satisfied with the configuration of the new rule, click New.
On the Completion page, click Finish. A status of Completed indicates that the wizard completed the task successfully. A status of Failed indicates that the task wasn't completed. If the task fails, review the summary for an explanation, and then click Back to make any additional changes.
Use the Shell to Configure a Disclaimer
You need to be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure. To see what permissions you need, see the "Transport rules" entry in the Messaging Policy and Compliance Permissions topic.
This example creates a transport rule to apply a disclaimer to all messages sent outside the organization. The disclaimer is appended to messages, and the fallback action is set to wrap.
New-TransportRule -Name ExternalDisclaimer -Enabled $true -SentToScope 'NotInOrganization' -ApplyHtmlDisclaimerLocation 'Append' -ApplyHtmlDisclaimerText "<h3>Disclaimer Title</h3><p>This is the disclaimer text.</p>" -ApplyHtmlDisclaimerFallbackAction Wrap
For detailed parameter and syntax information, see New-TransportRule.
Other Tasks
For information about creating disclaimers in Exchange 2013 or Exchange Online, see Add an Email Disclaimer, Legal Disclaimer, Common Signature, or Email Footer or Header.
After you configure a disclaimer, you may also want to:
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