Most of the time, you probably answer your own messages, but no doubt, there are times when you would like Microsoft® Office Outlook® 2007 to reply to messages for you automatically. For example, when you are out of the office on vacation, you probably want people who send you messages to receive an automatic reply that you are out but will respond to them when you return.
There are other reasons to set up automatic replies. For example, maybe you are selling something from a Web site and want people to receive a price list when they send a message to one of your e-mail accounts. Or perhaps you want to send a response when coworkers submit time sheets or other reports to you.
Whatever the case, Office Outlook 2007 offers several handy features to automate replies. Let’s take a look at the easiest to use—the Out Of Office Assistant.
One of the key features in Outlook 2007 that makes it a great e-mail client is the Out Of Office Assistant, which lets you automatically generate replies to incoming messages when you aren’t in the office. For example, if you’re going on vacation for a couple of weeks and won’t be checking your e-mail, you might want to have the Out Of Office Assistant send an automatic reply to let senders know that you’ll respond to their messages when you get back. Or you might do something similar when you are traveling for the day.
Note
The Out Of Office Assistant is a Microsoft Exchange Server feature. To learn how to create automatic responses with custom rules for use with other e-mail servers, see "Creating Automatic Responses with Custom Rules" later in this chapter.
Before you start learning about the Out Of Office Assistant, take a few minutes to consider a few other issues that relate to managing e-mail when you’re out of the office.
First, the Out Of Office Assistant is a server-side component for Exchange Server. This means that you can use it to process mail sent to your Exchange Server account but not your Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3), Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), or other e-mail accounts, unless those accounts deliver incoming messages to your Exchange Server Inbox. You can create rules to process your other accounts and simulate the function of the Out Of Office Assistant, but you must do this by creating custom rules.
Second, because the Out Of Office Assistant functions as a server-side component, it processes your messages even when Outlook 2007 isn’t running (a likely situation if you’re scuba diving off the Great Barrier Reef for a couple of weeks). To process your other accounts with custom Out Of Office rules, Outlook 2007 must be running and checking your messages periodically. If you have a direct Internet connection, you can configure the rules, configure your send/receive groups to allow Outlook 2007 to periodically check messages for the non–Exchange Server accounts, and leave Outlook 2007 running. If you have a dial-up connection to these accounts, you’ll have to also configure Outlook 2007 to dial when needed and disconnect after each send/receive operation.
Caution!
Be sure to configure your dial-up connection to disconnect after a reasonable idle period, such as 15 minutes. Otherwise, if your Internet access is metered, you might come back from two weeks of sun and fun to find that your dial-up connection has been connected continuously for the last two weeks. Most Internet service providers (ISPs) implement an idle cutoff, but any activity on the line can cause your dial-up connection to remain connected, so it’s important to configure the behavior from your side as well. Also be sure to configure Outlook 2007 to disconnect after the send/receive operation is completed.
If you use RPC-over-HTTP to connect to Exchange Server, Outlook 2007 will keep the connection alive. If you will be away from your computer for a while, close Outlook 2007 to prevent this.
The features available in the Out Of Office Assistant depend on the version of Exchange Server that your account resides on. In Exchange Server 2003 and earlier, you turn on the Out Of Office Assistant, and as soon as you do, Exchange Server responds to received messages by replying with your specified Out Of Office reply.
It continues to send Out Of Office replies until you turn off the Out Of Office Assistant. Exchange Server 2007, on the other hand, lets you specify the time period when you will be out. You don’t have to turn on or turn off the assistant—just specify the start date and end date for the time you will be out of the office, and during that time, Exchange Server will respond with Out Of Office replies.
Another difference in Exchange Server 2007 is the capability to specify different behavior for external and internal Out Of Office messages. For example, you might want to offer more information in the Out Of Office message you send to coworkers, such as who will be handling issues while you are gone, but omit that information from replies sent to people outside your organization. You or your Exchange Server administrator can control how replies are sent to specific external domains. For example, your organization might want to allow Out Of Office replies to go to business partners in specific companies but not to other senders or specific domains, such as Microsoft Hotmail®, Yahoo!, and so on. The Exchange Server 2007 Out Of Office Assistant can also be configured not to send replies to junk mail. Plus you can now use fonts, colors, and formatting in your replies.
Note
Because the Out Of Office Assistant is a server-side feature, you can take advantage of Exchange Server 2007 Out Of Office Assistant features from Outlook 2003 as well as Outlook 2007.
Using the Out Of Office Assistant is easy. Here’s the process in a nutshell:
Specify the text you want Outlook 2007 to use for automatic replies when you’re out of the office.
If necessary, create custom rules for the computer running Exchange Server to use to process incoming messages during your absence.
Note
For information about custom Out Of Office rules, see "Creating Custom Out Of Office Rules" later in this chapter.
Turn on the Out Of Office Assistant, which causes the Out Of Office Assistant to start responding to incoming messages. Or if you are using an Exchange Server 2007 account, you can specify the Out Of Office Assistant startup time, and Exchange Server will respond accordingly.
When you get back, turn off the Out Of Office Assistant so that it stops processing messages.
Note
When you start Outlook 2007, it checks to see whether the Out Of Office Assistant is turned on. If it is, Outlook 2007 asks whether you want to turn it off. After the Out Of Office Assistant is set up and functioning, messages that arrive in your Inbox receive an Out Of Office response with the message text you’ve specified. Exchange Server keeps track of the send-to list and sends the Out Of Office response the first time a message comes from a given sender. Subsequent messages from that sender are sent to your Inbox without generating an Out Of Office response. This procedure cuts down on the number of messages generated and keeps the senders from becoming annoyed by numerous Out Of Office replies.
Follow these steps to specify the text for automatic replies and to tell the computer running Exchange Server 2003 or earlier that you’re out of the office:
In Outlook 2007, select the Exchange Server Inbox, and then choose Tools, Out Of Office Assistant.
In the Out Of Office Assistant dialog box, shown in Figure 13-1, type the body of your automatic message reply in the AutoReply box. While the Out Of Office Assistant is active, Exchange Server uses this message to reply to incoming messages.
Select I Am Currently Out Of The Office, and then click OK.
Follow these steps to specify the text for automatic replies and to tell Exchange Server 2007 or earlier that you’re out of the office:
In Outlook 2007, select the Exchange Server Inbox, and then choose Tools, Out Of Office Assistant.
In the Out of Office Assistant dialog box, shown in Figure 13-2, click Send Out Of Office Auto-Replies.
Use the Start Time drop-down list to specify the starting date and time when you will be out of the office.
Use the End Time drop-down list to specify the date and time you will return to the office.
Click in the Inside My Organization box, and then type your Out Of Office reply. If you want to enhance your message, use fonts and other options from the formatting tools on the Out Of Office toolbar.
Click the Outside My Organization tab, and then specify the message you want sent to people outside your organization.
When you are satisfied with the message(s), click OK.
With the Out Of Office Assistant, you can create custom rules to use in addition to the basic automatic reply. To create a custom rule, open the Out Of Office Assistant, click Rules, and then click Add Rule to display the Edit Rule dialog box, shown in Figure 13-3.
The options in the Edit Rule dialog box are straightforward, particularly if you’re experienced at creating rules. Specify the conditions that the incoming messages should meet, and then specify the action that Exchange Server should perform if a message meets those conditions.
Note
If you need more help creating and using rules, see Chapter 11.
When you define the conditions, keep in mind that the Out Of Office Assistant conditions can be met by either full or partial matches. For example, you could type yce in the Sent To box, and the rule would apply if the address contained Joyce, Boyce, Cayce. If you want the condition to be met only if the full string is found, enclose the text in quotation marks—for example, "yce".