The Getting started checklist

A new administrator lands on a checklist rather than an empty portal. Granting admin consent from Sigil’s own sign-up path brings you straight here.

Every step’s completion is worked out from real state rather than being ticked off by hand. That makes the list honest: it cannot say a signature is working when Outlook has never applied one.

The steps

The checklist is split into three groups, in the order you would normally work through them. Getting a signature into Outlook comes first, and paying for Sigil comes after it, because the trial needs no card.

Get your first signature working

Step	Completes when	Required
Connect Microsoft 365	Sigil’s application can read your directory	Yes
Customise your signature	The active template is no longer the seeded starter	Yes
Deploy the Outlook add-in	Sigil has seen a signature request, or a successful apply, from your organisation	Yes
Check your signature in Outlook	The add-in has reported that it applied a signature	Yes

Keep signatures running after your trial

Step	Completes when	Required
Add your billing details	Your legal company name, billing email and a full address including the country are saved	Yes
Add a payment method	A card is on file in Stripe, or your account pays by invoice	Yes

While you are on a trial, the group’s description gives the date the trial ends. Once the trial is over, the same group is headed “Your subscription”.

Your team and agreement

Step	Completes when	Required
Accept the Data Processing Agreement	Acceptance is recorded against your organisation	No
Invite your team	At least one other person has been given a role	No
Send a test email	A test email has been sent	No

Working through it

The checklist is for the Admin role, and for a partner’s Owners and Admins managing the organisation.

1. Open Getting started in the portal sidebar.
2. Find the first step without a tick. Optional ones carry an Optional badge.
3. Choose the step’s button, which takes you to where the step is done.
4. Come back to Getting started once you have, and choose Check progress to re-read every step. The button reads “Checking…” while it works.

Publishing a template and saving a card also update the page on their own, so Check progress is mostly for the steps that happen outside the portal, such as the add-in.

Step	Button	Where it takes you
Connect Microsoft 365	Grant admin consent	Microsoft’s consent prompt
Customise your signature	Edit signature	Templates
Deploy the Outlook add-in	Open in Microsoft Marketplace	Sigil’s Microsoft Marketplace listing, in a new tab, where an administrator deploys it
Check your signature in Outlook	Check Activity	Activity
Add your billing details	Add billing details	The Billing details dialog, which you finish with Save billing details
Add a payment method	Add card	A card form that opens over the checklist, so you stay on Getting started
Accept the Data Processing Agreement	Review and accept	The DPA tab of Billing
Invite your team	Manage users	Users & roles
Send a test email	Send a test	Templates

The Add card button stays greyed out until your billing details are saved, and the step says “Save your billing details above before adding a card.” That is the order the portal accepts them in: adding a card is refused until the details are complete. See what waits on the billing details.

The progress line at the top reads, for example, “2 of 4 setup steps done”. It counts only the four steps in the first group. When all four are done, the page says “A signature has been applied in Outlook. Check Activity to confirm coverage across your pilot.”

Required and optional steps

The required steps are the ones without which signatures do not reach anybody, or stop reaching them when the trial ends. The panel stays open until all of them are done, billing included, even though the progress line has stopped counting at the first group.

The optional steps are prompts rather than gates. They matter, but an organisation whose signatures are working correctly should not be nagged by a permanently open checklist because of them.

The data processing agreement is deliberately in the optional group for that reason. It is how you evidence Article 28, so it belongs on the list, but an unsigned document holding the checklist open for a tenant whose signatures work would be the wrong trade. See compliance. The step’s button opens the DPA tab of the Billing view, where acceptance is recorded.

Some organisations do not see the billing group at all:

• An organisation nobody invoices, such as a comped or NFR one. See what the Billing view shows.
• A client whose partner is billed for it. The provider pays Sigil, so the client is not asked for billing details or a card. See partner billing.

For both, the two billing steps are excused rather than done, so they neither appear nor hold the panel open.

An organisation on invoice terms is a different case again. The payment step asks whether Sigil can collect what you owe rather than whether a card exists, so it completes for an account paying by invoice without one ever being added. It reads “Payment method” and says that invoices are emailed to your billing contact. It stays required, because it genuinely is done rather than being set aside.

Cancelling is the exception. The payment step reopens for both arrangements, because at that point it stops asking about payment and starts asking you to reactivate. Its button is Go to Billing.

Connecting Microsoft 365

This is the first step in every sense. Without admin consent, Sigil cannot read your directory, so there is nothing to personalise a signature with and no users to pull in.

It completes when Sigil’s application registration can actually read your directory, which means it also un-ticks itself if that consent is later revoked. A successful check is remembered for five minutes, so a revoked consent can take that long to show here. A failed one is not remembered, so the step ticks as soon as consent is granted. A Microsoft 365 administrator grants it once. See connect your organisation.

The add-in step

This is the one that matters and the one that is easiest to get wrong, so it carries the full instructions and a button that opens Sigil’s Microsoft Marketplace listing.

It completes only when the service has actually heard from the add-in in your organisation: a signature request, or a reported apply. Finishing the deployment does not tick it. Somebody composing a message does.

That is the point. Deployment is asynchronous and takes 6 to 72 hours to propagate, so a step that completed on deployment would tell you nothing useful.

See deploy the add-in.

Checking the signature in Outlook

The add-in step proves the add-in is running. This step proves it worked. It completes only when the add-in reports that it applied a signature to a message, so a request that failed to apply leaves it open.

1. Open Outlook as somebody in your pilot group.
2. Start a new message and wait for the signature to appear.
3. Back in the portal, choose Check progress on Getting started.
4. If the step is still open, choose Check Activity and look up that mailbox to see what happened. See Activity.

The step reads a per-mailbox summary that Sigil keeps for longer than the raw request log, so the tick survives after the individual request has aged out.

Publishing a signature

New tenants are seeded with a ready-made starter design, so this step completes when you replace it with something of your own.

That is a deliberate default. Opening a signature product on a blank page makes the first hour harder than it needs to be, and a seeded design gives you something to edit rather than something to invent.

If you would rather start from your own branding, the New template dialog can build the starter from the logo, brand colour, address and social profiles your website already publishes. See starting from your website.

The panel

The portal opens on the checklist straight after you sign up and grant consent. After that it opens on Templates, and the checklist waits under Getting started in the sidebar whether or not its steps are done. Dismissing it records that you have hidden it and takes you to Templates. That flag is the one piece of state stored about the checklist; everything else is computed.

1. Open Getting started in the portal sidebar.
2. Choose Dismiss.

The portal confirms it is hidden and that you can still reach it from the sidebar, then opens Templates.

You can return to it from Getting started in the sidebar at any time.

After the checklist

Once the basics work, the usual next steps are assignment rules if different groups need different signatures, a compliance footer if legal needs one, and Activity to confirm coverage across the organisation.

For a larger deployment, planning a rollout sets out a phased approach.