Test emails

Preview shows a signature with sample data inside the portal. A test email shows the real thing in a real client, which is the only way to know how Outlook actually renders it.

Sending one

From the portal, send a rendered signature to an inbox. The mail arrives containing the signature exactly as a recipient would receive it, including inline images, the current banner if a window is open, and the applicable footer.

Recipients must be verified

The recipient has to be a verified destination address.

This is a platform rule of the mail service Sigil sends through, and it is also the guardrail that stops the endpoint being usable to mail anybody other than the administrators themselves.

If a test email does not arrive, an unverified recipient is the most likely reason.

What to check

Open the test in the clients your organisation actually uses. Outlook on Windows is worth checking most carefully, because it renders with Word’s engine and is the most restrictive of the group.

Look at the layout at a narrow window width, since a fixed-width table can force horizontal scrolling. Check that images appear rather than showing as broken. Check that conditional sections collapsed the way you expected, with no stray separators or empty labels. And read the footer, if you have one, since it is the part nobody proofreads.

Testing a different person’s signature

A test email renders one mailbox’s signature. To check what a specific colleague receives, use the download action on the Templates view, which produces the live signature for any mailbox you name as a standalone HTML file.

That is the reliable way to verify an assignment rule, because it resolves the rules exactly as a real request would.

Testing a banner before it launches

Set a short window covering now, send a test email, then set the real window. Banner windows take effect immediately in both directions, so this costs nothing.

Who can send them

Admins and Editors. The Marketing role does not reach test emails.