An autoresponder is a prewritten reply that is automatically sent when an email message is received. These are commonly used to notify senders of a change in contact information or that the recipient is out of the office or on vacation. For example, a standard autoresponder message could be: "I will be out of the office from June 1 to June 15. I will respond to your message upon my return to the office on June 16. If you need immediate assistance, please contact Jane Doe at jdoe@example.com."
SmarterMail offers 2 types of autoresponder: one for domain users and one for "everyone else". This is helpful as you may want to let your co-workers know that, say, you're out of the office but you'll be available for calls if anything comes up, but let everyone else know that you're out of the office but will be back by a certain date. In addition, SmarterMail gives you some flexibility on who gets your "Out of Office" message and who doesn't. Autoresponders are sent out once per day, per sender. That means that if you receive multiple emails from the same individual in a 24 hour period, they will only get 1 automated reply. This prevents inbox spamming as well as prevents the potential for "email loops" -- such as if the person sending you a message has their own autoresponder set up, there is no chance for the 2 mailboxes to continually sending each other automated replies.
To set up an autoresponder, log in to SmarterMail and click on the Settings icon. Then click on Autoresponder in the navigation pane. The following items will be available:
Note: If Autoresponder is not displayed in the navigation pane, the System Administrator of the installation must enable Autoresponders in the Antispam settings using the Options card > Autoresponders setting.
Autoresponder
- Subject - The words or phrase that will appear in the subject of the autoresponder message (e.g. Out of Office).
- Response to Send to Domain Users - The message that will be automatically sent to the other accounts that have been set up for your domain. SmarterMail allows users to create HTML formatted autoresponders that can include stylized text, links, images and more.
- Response to Send to Everyone Else - This message will be sent to anyone outside of your domain. (Depending on the what's been set on the Options card.)
Options
System Administrators can enforce a domain-wide autoresponder exclusion in order to prevent SmarterMail from sending autoresponder replies to spam messages. Otherwise, if no settings are passed down to you, you'll have the following options:
- Enable Autoresponder - Turn on the autoresponder.
- Disable responses to indirect mail - By enabling this setting, the autoresponder will only be triggered by email sent directly to you. Any email you receive through a mailing list, forward, or an alias will not trigger the autoresponder.
- Only send between certain dates - Enable this setting to specify the date range that your autoresponder will be active. Then set the specified start and end dates and times. This option is particularly helpful for planned absences, like a vacation or extended holiday.
- Send To - This dropdown allows you to set up who received your autoresponse messages. You may not want to send one to just anyone who emails you, but only send them to a specific subset of people. This dropdown allows you to do just that.
- Domain Users Only - This will only send an autoresponder to others on your domain. In this instance, you'll only need to fill out the "Response to Send to Domain Users" message.
- Domain Users and Contacts Only - This will send an autoresponder JUST to others on your domain as well as anyone listed in "My Contacts". In this case, you'll want to fill out both messages.
- Everyone - This will send an autoresponder to anyone who emails you. In this case, you'll want to fill out both messages.