Every document. Every menu. Every device. Every time.
Your brand is more than a logo. It's the font on every memo, the colors in every presentation, and the confidence your team projects when every deliverable looks like it came from the same firm. Bauer Automate's Microsoft 365 Custom Branding service replaces the default Office experience with yours, so your team never has to think about formatting again.
Who This Is For
This service is for organizations that take their brand seriously across every touchpoint and run Microsoft 365 as their primary productivity platform.
The Problem
Most organizations run Microsoft 365 out of the box. That means every new Word document starts with Calibri 11. Every PowerPoint opens with a generic white slide. Every email goes out with whatever signature the user typed on their first day. And every time someone pastes content from an old document, they bring along five conflicting fonts and a bullet style from 2014.
The traditional fix has been a shared network drive with templates that nobody uses, a style guide PDF that nobody reads, and maybe a login script that copies a Word file to each machine once a day, if the user actually restarts their laptop.
We built something better - always with the tools you're already using!
What this is costing you right now
Nobody built our templates
Building Word, PowerPoint, and Excel templates yourself costs days; a designer costs more and takes longer. Bring a logo and a colour; get back a finished branded set you didn't have to build.
The Reformatting Tax
Your team retypes fonts and rebuilds headers on file after file, and that time is billable and gone. On Brand starts every new document on-brand, so on-brand becomes the easy path.
AI That Doesn't Sound Like You
Staff already paste AI drafts into client work. Without your voice and your rules wired in, every draft arrives generic, off-voice, and unbranded, and someone pays the cleanup cost.
Your sign-in screen is a security gap
What Changes:
When we deploy the Custom Branding package, your team's Microsoft 365 experience transforms from the moment they open an application.
Documents That Start Right
Every new Word document, PowerPoint presentation, Excel workbook, and Outlook email opens with your brand's fonts, colors, and styles already in place. We replace the built-in Office defaults at the template level, so there is no extra step for your team. They click "New Document" and your brand is already there.
But we go much further than setting a default font.
In Word, we take full control of the formatting ecosystem. The Quick Styles gallery shows only your approved heading styles, body text, and list formats. The built-in bullet styles and auto-numbering options that create formatting chaos are removed entirely and replaced with clean, consistent alternatives that match your brand. When someone pastes content from an external source, Word's paste behavior is configured to merge it into your styles automatically. Formatting inconsistencies are flagged visually. Grammar and style checking run by default.
The result is that it's actually a lot of work to produce an off-brand document on purpose. Every path of least resistance leads to the right formatting. A busy partner who just needs to get a memo out doesn't need to know anything about styles; the document simply looks correct from the first keystroke. And when Copilot drafts a section, it inherits your brand's formatting automatically, because the defaults it writes into are already yours.
The same approach extends to PowerPoint, where only your branded slide layouts and themes appear and built-in table styles are hidden. In Excel, default fonts, table styles, and workbook templates match the rest of your suite.
Power BI, Too
Most branding projects stop at Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. We don't.
Every workstation gets a desktop shortcut that opens Power BI Desktop directly into your branded report template, with your standard dimensions, color palette, and theme already applied. Your analysts and report builders never start from a blank canvas. They start from your brand.
Every Way to Create a File, Covered
We don't just control what happens when you open an Office application. We control what happens every way someone creates a file on their workstation.
- Right-click, brand-first. New+ option adds a curated list of branded file and folder templates to the right-click menu everywhere in Windows File Explorer. Right-click in any folder, select "New+", and choose from your firm's branded templates: a new proposal, a new client folder structure, a new report. These templates come from a managed folder on SharePoint whose contents automatically appear in every user's right-click menu. When your team adds a new template to that folder, it shows up on every workstation without anyone deploying anything.
- File > New, your way. The Office template gallery shows only your branded templates. Built-in Microsoft templates and web templates are hidden. The Custom tab is the default, so your team sees your templates first, every time.
- SharePoint "New" menu, everywhere. We create global content types tied to the same branded template files, so the "+ New" menu in every SharePoint document library across your tenant offers your branded documents, not the generic blank ones. A user clicking "New" in a project library sees the same branded proposal template they'd see on their desktop, in File Explorer, or in File > New. One set of templates, consistent everywhere.
- Quick Parts and Building Blocks. One-click access to approved content blocks: standard contract clauses, address headers, project description boilerplate, or any reusable content your firm uses regularly.
- AutoCorrect, firm-wide. Common abbreviations, client names, or legal citations expand automatically for every user.
Between the default templates, the Office template gallery, the right-click menu, SharePoint libraries, Quick Parts, and AutoCorrect, there is no workflow, on the desktop or in the browser, where someone accidentally starts with a blank, unbranded canvas. Every path leads to your brand.
Templates That Update in Minutes, Not Days
This is where our approach is fundamentally different from traditional IT deployments.
Most Group Policy (GPO) based template deployments copy files to user machines at login. That means if you update a letterhead, add a new Quick Part, or change a cover page template, the update doesn't reach your team until they restart their computer and log back in. For users who sleep their laptops instead of shutting down (which is almost everyone), that could be days or weeks. In practice, many organizations find that template updates take one to two weeks to fully propagate.
Our architecture delivers updates to connected workstations within minutes of a change being made. No restart required. No login script. No waiting. Your marketing team can update a proposal template at 10:00 AM and the entire firm is using it by 10:15 AM.
The small handful of deep Office defaults (like the base Word template) use an intelligent scheduled deployment that runs every few hours and only triggers when the source file has actually changed. Even these are measured in hours, not weeks.
A Branded Desktop, End to End
The branding doesn't stop at Office documents. We configure the entire Windows desktop experience to reflect your organization:
- Desktop, lock screen, and login screen display your branded wallpaper and imagery
- Windows theme and accent colors are set to your brand palette and locked so they stay consistent
- Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome open to your intranet, display your managed bookmarks, and use your brand's theme color
- Microsoft Teams and Zoom virtual meeting backgrounds are pre-loaded with your branded options
- The Windows Start Menu is configured with pinned shortcuts to the tools your team actually uses
- Email signatures are deployed and managed centrally through CodeTwo, so every outgoing email carries a consistent, professional signature block
Productivity Tools, Preconfigured
We don't just brand the experience; we make it more productive. Every deployment includes a curated set of power-user tools that are configured and ready to use from day one:
- PowerToys is deployed with 20+ modules including Advanced Paste, Text Extractor, Color Picker, Fancy Zones for window management, Peek for quick file previews, and PowerRename for bulk file operations. We have reverse engineered scalable settings, such as globally setting New+ to use the company templates folder.
- Clipboard History and Cloud Clipboard keep copied content accessible and synced across devices.
- Settings for custom apps. Example: We use Notepad++ with custom User Defined Languages for many industry-specific file formats our team works with and we can probably push out global settings for your other internal apps too.
Security Without Friction
Every branding deployment includes a security baseline that protects your organization without getting in the way of daily work:
- Macro hardening blocks untrusted macros from the internet and only allows digitally signed macros to run
- Browser security enables SmartScreen and Safe Browsing protections, disables credit card and payment autofill on managed devices, and blocks users from bypassing HTTPS certificate warnings
- Protected View is configured to trust your cloud-synced libraries, so your team doesn't see unnecessary security prompts when opening their own documents
- Add-in management blocks unapproved Office add-ins while allowing a curated set that your organization needs
- Windows Hello biometric authentication and automatic screen locking protect devices when they're left unattended
How it Works
Everything is managed from a central SharePoint site that serves as the single source of truth for your brand deployment. Templates, themes, wallpapers, backgrounds, Quick Parts, AutoCorrect entries, right-click templates, and productivity tool settings all live here. Changes made to this site propagate to every workstation automatically through the OneDrive sync client.
Your marketing team or brand administrators can update any template, swap a wallpaper, add a new Quick Part, or drop a new file template into the right-click menu directly in SharePoint. No IT tickets. No deployment scripts. No waiting for the next login cycle.
Every policy and configuration in this package is deployed and managed through Microsoft Intune. There's no additional software to install, no third-party agents, and no separate management console. Everything is native Microsoft, managed through the tools your IT team already knows.
What You Get
Four ways to start. You can combine them.
1. Do It Yourself
The On Brand Kit: you download everything, your admin follows the guide. We never touch your tenant.
2. Govern Your AI
AI Business Enablement: an AI Acceptable Use Policy your team actually signs, your voice as a system prompt, and a prompt library. Essentials is documents only. Complete deploys the Copilot governance layer in your tenant.
3. We Deploy It For You
Our managed app applies the same branding straight into your tenant after a single approval click, then removes its own access. Nothing for your admin to install.
4. Full service
A Bauer Automate consultant deploys On Brand Ready, Pro, or 365 end to end across your environment, to the depth your tier includes.
On Brand: At A Glance
| Feature | Ready | Pro | 365 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Branded templates in File > New | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Desktop wallpaper / lock screen | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Microsoft Edge brand configuration | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Desktop app defaults replaced (Normal.dotm) | − | ✓ | ✓ |
| Quick Styles & Paste Enforcement | − | ✓ | ✓ |
| SharePoint template auto-sync | − | ✓ | ✓ |
| Teams & Zoom Virtual Backgrounds | − | ✓ | ✓ |
| Teams meeting-invite branding (logo, legal/help links) + AI transcript-disclosure footer | − | ✓ | ✓ |
| Branded File Requests (external file-intake links) | − | ✓ | ✓ |
| Branded infographic generator (AI brand skill) † | − | ✓ | ✓ |
| Company templates in right-click menu (File Explorer, from SharePoint) | − | − | ✓ |
| SharePoint content types (branded New Menu in libraries) | − | − | ✓ |
| Server-side email signatures | − | − | ✓ |
| Branded Power BI report template shortcut (client-supplied or Bauer-hosted .pbit) | − | − | ✓ |
| Importable AI design package (rebuilds your design system in Claude; yours to back up and reuse)‡ | − | − | ✓ |
✓ Included
− Not in this tier
† Requires a Claude Pro license for the skill-based generator, or a custom-built Copilot agent.
‡ Requires a Claude plan that includes the design system. The package is generated from your own brand and stays yours; it is re-imported on each brand change rather than syncing on its own.
What Makes Us Different: Automate Your Branding, Wholistically
Near-Real-Time Template Propagation
Most GPO-based deployments update templates at login, which means changes take days or weeks to reach every user. Our approach delivers updates to connected workstations in minutes.
Total Formatting Control, Not Just a Default Font
We remove off-brand options from the interface entirely. The Quick Styles gallery, bullet styles, numbering formats, and theme choices are all locked to your brand. It's easier to produce an on-brand document than an off-brand one.
Every File Creation Path Is Covered
Default templates, the template gallery, right-click New+ in File Explorer, Quick Parts, AutoCorrect, and Power BI desktop shortcuts. There is no workflow where someone accidentally starts with a blank, unbranded canvas.
AI-Ready Defaults
With Copilot generating content faster than ever, the formatting, proofing, and style defaults that shape that content matter more than before. Our configuration ensures AI-generated content inherits your brand from the start.
Productivity, Not Just Branding
Every deployment includes a curated productivity toolkit that makes your team faster, not just more consistent.
Native Microsoft, No Third-Party Dependencies
Everything runs on Intune, OneDrive, SharePoint, and M365 Apps policies. No agents to maintain, no vendor lock-in beyond what you already have with Microsoft 365.
Built To Be Maintained by Your Team
Your marketing or brand administrators update templates directly in SharePoint. No IT tickets required for day-to-day changes.
LMNO-HTTP-what? Acronyms mixed up? SLANG misunderstood?
Communicate without friction by sharing a dictionary of company and industry-specific terms and acronyms through the default browser and desktop search.
How it Works
Full Service: Ready, Pro, and 365
1. Discovery >
We collect your brand assets, understand your document workflows, and identify which templates your team actually needs.
2. Build >
We create the branded templates, configure the policies, write the deployment scripts, and prepare the central SharePoint site.
3. Pilot >
We deploy to a small group of representative users and validate that everything works as expected in your environment.
4. Rollout >
We expand to the full organization, with flexibility for teams that need to create or modify templates.
5. Handoff
We document everything and train your team on how to update templates, manage the content, and make changes going forward.
Self-Serve Option:
1. Send Your Files
Share your existing files and brand basics.
2. We Build Your Kit
Our team assembles the full bundle from what you sent.
3. Download Everything
Get your kit and your DIY guide.
4. Your Admin Installs It
Your IT admin completes the setup in your own tenant, following the guide. We never access it.
See A Real Brand Style Guide
