How to bulk update user signatures across the domain?

[BittuChan]

Is there a way to update email signatures for all users in our organization using the CLI? We're rolling out a new company signature template and manually updating 200+ users through the admin console sounds painful.

I saw the gws gmail settings commands but can't find signature-specific examples in the docs.

[Shiven0504]

Yeah you can do this! Use the sendas settings command. Here's the basic syntax:
gws gmail settings sendas update <email> --signature "Your HTML signature here"

For bulk updates, you'd loop through a user list. Something like:

while read email; do
  gws gmail settings sendas update "$email" --signature-file template.html
done < users.txt

Make sure your service account has the right delegated admin API scopes.

[BittuChan]

Thanks @Shiven0504, Quick follow-up - does this replace the entire signature or can I append to existing ones? Some users have custom additions we want to keep.
Also, should the HTML file be inline or can it reference external images?

[Shiven0504]

It replaces the whole thing, unfortunately. No append mode. If you need to preserve custom parts, you'd have to:

1. Fetch current signature with gws gmail settings sendas get
2. Parse and merge with your template
3. Update with the merged version

For images - use absolute URLs pointing to hosted images (like your company CDN). Base64 inline images work too but make the signature bloated. Avoid relative paths, they'll break.

[BittuChan]

Got it. I'll write a script to fetch existing ones first and merge the new footer template.

[BittuChan]

One more thing - does this trigger any user notifications or is it silent on their end?

[Shiven0504]

Silent update. Users won't get notified, the signature just changes next time they compose an email.
I'd recommend testing on a small group first (maybe 5-10 users) before running the full 200. That way you can catch any formatting issues early.

[BittuChan]

Perfect, that's the plan. Testing with our IT team first then rolling out.
Really appreciate the help!