Boswell's Q&A
Auto-Babble
Quick solution that allows a public folder to automatically reply to incoming e-mail.
- By Bill Boswell
- 09/14/2004
Question: I read your solution last week for sending autoreplies
from resource mailboxes.
[See "Limiting Calendar Conflicts"
at http://mcpmag.com/columns/article.asp?EditorialsID=779.
—Editor] I am trying to find out if there is a tool/solution
for setting up a public folder to auto-reply to e-mails sent to that resource.
Any ideas?
— Ashu
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Answer: You can use Outlook to set up an autoreply. Here's
how to do it:
- Launch Outlook using the account of someone with admin permissions
for the public folder tree.
- Open the Properties window for the public folder in Outlook and select
the Administration tab.
- Click Folder Assistant. This opens a Folder Assistant window.
- Click Add Rule. This opens an Edit Rule window.
- Check the Reply With option and then click Template. This opens a
standard message form.
- Enter the subject and text of the message you'd like to use for the
autoreply. Don't fill in a To or Cc.
- Save and close the message form then click OK. You'll get a warning
that this rule will fire for all incoming messages.
- Click Yes then OK then OK again to close all the windows.
- In Outlook, send a message to the public folder. You should get a
reply back immediately. The reply will use the subject and body you
put in the template message.
Hope this helps, Ashu!
Deploying XP SP2
Have you deployed XP SP2 yet? Have any war stories to tell? Send
me your experiences, good and bad, and we'll print them in an upcoming
column.
Also, I know that quite a few of you manage Exchange servers. Eric Hartmann,
a tester on Microsoft's core Exchange team, has posted an inside look
at free/busy scheduling on the official Exchange team blog, You Had Me
At EHLO. Check it out at http://blogs.msdn.com/exchange/archive/2004/08/19/217187.aspx.
About the Author
Contributing Editor Bill Boswell, MCSE, is the principal of Bill Boswell Consulting, Inc. He's the author of Inside Windows Server 2003 and Learning Exchange Server 2003 both from Addison Wesley. Bill is also Redmond magazine's "Windows Insider" columnist and a speaker at MCP Magazine's TechMentor Conferences.