—
Live Preview
Edits update instantly. Staff name, role and email come from M365 in production, faked here for the demo.
Hi team,
At NCC, we talk a lot about valuing what matters most. But lately I've been wondering what that actually looks like from the students' perspective - in the classroom, on the playground, at the end of a boring assembly. Keen to hear what you're noticing with your students.
Recent changes
The last 20 saves to admin, newest first. Use this to see who edited what.
How this works
A quick walk through the admin and the add-in. Pin this tab when you're getting set up.
The short version: every staff member's email signature gets written for them, on every email they send, without them having to think about it. You're the person who decides what those signatures look like. Welcome.
harrison.black@ncc.qld.edu.au) and I'll walk you through it.
What staff see
The add-in runs inside Outlook on every new compose, reply and forward. The moment a staff member opens an email window, the right signature lands at the bottom. They never copy and paste, never have to fix their signature when contact details change, never have to remember which version to use.
Their name, role, email and extension all come straight from M365, so nothing's hand-typed and nothing goes stale. If marketing updates the school address, the next email they send picks it up.
There's a Signature button in the Outlook ribbon if they want to change a few personal bits:
- A title prefix (Mr, Mrs, Dr, Rev, etc.) if they use one.
- Their working days and hours, so people know when to expect a reply.
- The sign-off they prefer (Kind regards, Blessings, Yours in Christ, whatever feels right for them).
- A direct phone line, if they have one.
- Hide their extension if they'd rather not show it.
That's the lot. Most staff will set those once and never open the taskpane again.
The admin (this thing)
The sidebar on the left is the only navigation. Click a brand to edit it. Click Global Settings for shared stuff. That's it, no hidden menus or back buttons.
Brands are completely independent of each other. Editing NCC can't accidentally change Gulf. Editing Gulf can't change ELC. The save endpoint is per-brand by URL, so the system literally can't write to the wrong brand even if something tries.
What you can change on each brand
- Logo: drag a file in, or paste a URL. The image you set here is what shows at the bottom of every signature for that brand.
- Brand colours: the green and red used throughout. The live preview on the right updates as you type, so you can see exactly what staff will see.
- Who can use this brand: type Entra security groups in (the chip box), one per group. Staff in any of those groups can pick this brand from their dropdown. Anyone outside those groups can't.
- School details: college name, address, phone, email, website, CRICOS. The address is split into Street Address and PO Box, and shows in the signature as a single line joined with a pipe.
- Variants: special-event signatures for this brand. Each variant inherits everything from the parent brand except its logo. Think Christmas Concert, school musical, Open Day.
Saving
One Apply button per brand. It saves the brand's data and its access groups together. The next time staff open a new email in Outlook, they'll see the new version. No restart, no re-install, no waiting around.
Global Settings
Things that are the same across every brand:
- The list of sign-off options staff can pick from (Kind regards, Warm regards, Blessings, etc.).
- The list of title prefixes (Mr, Mrs, Dr, Rev).
- Inline labels (
E:,P:,Ext:,CRICOS:). - Which fields staff are allowed to edit from their taskpane.
Security groups
Access to each brand is controlled by Microsoft Entra security groups. Daniel sets these up in the admin centre, and staff get added to the one that matches their school.
| Group | Sees |
|---|---|
| SG-NCCstaff | NCC + its variants |
| SG-GCCstaff | Gulf + its variants |
| SG-ELCstaff | NCC Early Learners + its variants |
| SG-SWIMMERSstaff | NCC Swimmers + its variants |
| SG-EmailSigAdmin | Everything (that's you) |
Staff in more than one group get the union. Anyone who isn't in any of these groups falls back to NCC by default, so a brand-new hire still gets a working signature on day one while IT sets their group up.
You can edit which groups unlock which brand from each brand's editor under "Who can use this brand". The defaults above will be fine for most of NCC, but if a new school joins or a group gets renamed, this is where you update it.
Variants for special events
For when a school musical, Open Day, or another event wants its own logo on emails for a few weeks. You create the variant inside the parent brand's editor, give it a name (e.g. NCC Christmas Concert 2026) and a logo. Everything else (colours, address, contact info) comes from the parent brand automatically.
Staff who can already see the parent brand will see the variant appear as an option in their taskpane dropdown. When the event's over, just delete the variant.
Behind the scenes
For the curious. Skip this if you don't care.
- The Outlook add-in is a manifest XML that points at HTML and JavaScript files on Cloudflare Pages.
- Brand data and global settings live in Cloudflare KV. The admin POSTs there when you click Apply, and the add-in fetches from there on every compose.
- Staff name, email and job title come live from Microsoft Graph via Nested App Authentication. MSAL.js inside the taskpane swaps the Office SSO token for a Graph token through Microsoft's auth servers, so we don't need a backend or a client secret.
- The same signature template runs in three places (live preview here, taskpane, headless launch event) so the output is identical wherever the signature gets built.
If something looks wrong
- A staff member can't find their school's signature. Most likely they're not in the matching SG yet. Drop them into the right group (or ask IT to) and tell them to close and reopen Outlook.
- An old logo's still showing. Click Remove uploaded logo on the brand, hit Apply, then re-upload the new one. The cached version usually clears on the next compose.
- Save failed: logo too large. The cap is around 220KB. Compress the image (TinyPNG, Squoosh, or Canva's export-as-PNG with web compression) and try again.
- Edit didn't show up in Outlook. Outlook caches signatures for a short bit. Close and reopen, or wait for the next compose.
- Outlook Classic doesn't auto-apply. Classic for Windows doesn't support the LaunchEvent we use. Staff on Classic can still open the taskpane manually and click Apply to insert the signature.
Who to ask for what
- Tech or bug: me (
harrison.black@ncc.qld.edu.au). - Logo or branding sign-off: Director of Marketing.
- Adding or moving someone in a security group: Daniel / IT.
- Adding a variant for an event: do it yourself in the brand's editor, no approval needed for short-lived event signatures.
Valuing what matters most, NCC Education Group.
Global Settings
Sign-offs, titles, labels and end-user permissions. Shared across every brand.