Awareness Training - Custom Email Notifications & Phishing Templates

This article describes how to customize training notifications, watchlist notifications, and phishing translated templates, and is intended for Administrators.

Also see:

• Company Wide Training Details
• Email Notifications
• Managing Phishing Templates
• Targeted Training Details

We support the use of HTML to customize notifications and phishing templates in Awareness Training, however our Support team is unable to assist with custom HTML coding.

Adding a Custom Banner or Signature

If you use a company standard banner for email, you can add this into your Mimecast Awareness Training notifications, by using the following steps:

1. Open Microsoft Outlook.
2. Click on New Email to open a blank email message.
3. Create the banner within the email body. For example, an External Email Warning or Company Signature.
4. Navigate to File | Save As.
5. Enter a File name.
6. Click on the Save as type drop down menu.
7. Select HTML.
8. Click Save.
9. Click on the Folder icon on your taskbar.
10. Locate the HTML file in your Folder List, right-click and select Open with | Notepad.
11. Press Ctrl + C on your keyboard to select and copy the text in the Notepad file, except the first paragraph.
12. Navigate to the Mimecast Awareness Training notification you would like the image to appear in (e.g. Custom Phishing Email Template, Training Module or Campaign, or Watchlist Notification Email).

13. Click on the Source Code <> icon to view the HTML code.

    

14. Select the field in the browser where the information is to be entered e.g. at the top of the notification, and press Ctrl + V on your keyboard to paste the HTML code into the content editor.
15. Click Save. The banner / signature is now added to the Mimecast Awareness Training template or notification.

If your HTML code exceeds the character allowance (the Email Template allows a maximum of 8192 characters), an error message appears, and you are not permitted to save the template / notification. Reduce the amount of HTML code, as required.

Adding Images to Notifications and Templates

You can add images into Mimecast Awareness Training Notifications and Translated Templates. This is useful if you want to add your own resizable logo to Training or Watchlist Notifications, instead of using integrated notification branding, or if you want to add your logo to Phishing Translated Templates.

Custom Logo / Company Branding is configured via the Mimecast Administration Console and integrated with the Mimecast Awareness Training Dashboard and Email Notifications and is available for Email Security Cloud Gateway only. See Branding.

You can add an image, by using the following steps:

1. Log in to the Mimecast Awareness Training platform.
2. Navigate to the Content Editor of an Email Notification or Phishing Translated Template.
3. Click on Insert Image in the Format Toolbar.

3. Either drag and drop an image into the dialog box, or select an image from your file drive.

The maximum file size is 1 MB. Supported file types are PNG, GIF, JPG, JPEG, BMP.

4. Resize the image if required manually, or click on the Image Icon to edit the configuration.

If you use an externally hosted images from publicly hosted or internal websites, ensure that the URL contains https, not http. Secure email sanitization will remove images that are not sourced from a secure URL.
Example of HTML source code for an externally hosted image: <img src="https://www.domain_name.com/imagehost/icon.png">

Branding for Emails only applies the Logo / Branding to Training Modules, Campaign Emails, and Watchlist Reminder Emails. It does not apply Logo / Branding to Phishing Translated Templates.

• The Custom Logo / Branding is not visible on the Email Notification within Mimecast Awareness Training, so cannot be customized / resized. The end user sees the logo / branding in the email notification they receive.
• If you prefer to add your own logo that can be resized and placed in a different location, Turn Off Branding For Emails and use the copy image method explained above, instead.

Creating Your Own Custom Phishing Template

If you have received an email that you think would make a good Phishing Translated Template, you can use most of the template to create your own Custom Translated Template by using the following steps:

1. Open Microsoft Outlook.
2. Find the email that you would like to convert into a Custom Translated Template.
3. Navigate to File | Save As.
4. Enter a File name.
5. Click on the Save as type drop-down menu.
6. Select HTML.
7. Click Save.
8. Click on the Folder icon on your taskbar.
9. Locate the HTML file in your Folder List.
10. Select and right-click the HTML file.
11. Select Open with | Notepad.
12. Press Ctrl + C on your keyboard to select all the text in the Notepad file, except the first paragraph.
13. Navigate to Awareness Training | Phishing | Email Templates.
14. Select any of the Single Page Translated Templates.
15. Select Copy.
16. Click on the Source Code <> icon to view the HTML code.
17. Click into the top of the code and press the Enter key to add a row.
18. Select the field in the browser where the information is to be entered e.g. at the top of the notification, and press Ctrl + V on your keyboard to paste the HTML code into the content editor.
19. Click Save. The email content is merged into the Mimecast Awareness Training Custom Translated Template.
20. Use the text editor to carefully amend the contents of the phishing template by deleting all legitimate text, names, addresses, links and anything else you want removed from the phishing template. It's best to keep the original content of the phishing template and simply edit the verbiage and links.

• The [Name] attribute can be deleted or moved to a different part of the template. The [Name] attribute is a dynamic field and is auto-populated with the display name, usually First Name Last Name or Last Name, First Name. You can change [Name] to auto-populate with First Name instead, using the Email Recipient Name field on General Settings. See Specifying Custom User Email Name.
• To edit pre-configured embedded links, select the linked text in the Content Editor and click the Insert / Edit Link icon:

• The Text to display can be edited to match your new template contents.
• Mimecast Awareness Training Phishing Translated Templates must include the following links, which are automatically embedded by default. If you delete these links, you'll get an error message and not be able to save the template:
  • [tracklink] must be located at the end of the translated template, to enable the phishing statistics to be captured.
  • [rawlink] to link to the Mimecast Awareness Training phishing campaign landing page. While this exists inside our platform, you can include an embedded link to your own company website that opens in a new window when clicked.