I am working on defining a customized standard mail template, mail6.ntf, for our company that has multiple mail servers. Some of the servers have already customized there mail templates and want to use the template with the standard template that will be defined. I believe once the designer is loaded it will REPLACE the design not APPEND the design. Is there any way that I can append the design where it will hold both the designs (new design and old design, both are on mail6.ntf)?
If you want everyone to use the same mail template, then you should make the changes you require to the mail template, and replicate that template to all mail servers. That way when the design task runs, it refreshes all mail databases to use the updated template. Just make sure that the original mail template does not still exist on the server with the same template name (in database properties) or the server will see that as multiple templates with the same name.
If you want to modify specific design elements or add a few additional design elements and maintain those elements outside of the mail template (so they are not overwritten if you upgrade), you can add them to the mail template, but set the "Inherit from the Design Template" design property to refer to another template.
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This was first published in November 2004