Automatically Responding to Messages


If your organization is running Exchange, you can use the Out Of Office Assistant to inform people who send you e-mail messages of your availability. Turning on the Out Of Office Assistant causes replies to be automatically sent in response to messages received from other people (but only to the first message from each person). You can provide whatever (textual) information you want within the body of the auto-reply message.

Outlook 2007 acts as a front end to the out of office (OOO) functionality provided by Exchange Server, so the interface and experience are different depending on what version of Exchange Server your organization is running. When interfacing with Exchange Server 2007, you have more control over the content and distribution of auto-replies than when interfacing with Exchange Server 2003. Regardless of which Exchange Server environment you're working in, this is a very useful feature.

The purpose of the OOO function is to help you set expectations for response time or give people other information you want them to have. You don't have to be physically out of the office to use this feature; some people use it to let other people know when responses will be delayed for other reasons, such as when they are working on a project that will prevent them from responding promptly to messages, or to let customers who might be in different time zones know when they have left the office for the evening.

In addition to sending auto-replies, you can have Outlook process messages that arrive while you are OOO by using rules that are in effect only when the OOO function is on.

See Also For information about using rules to automatically forward, reply to, delete, alert you to, or otherwise process incoming messages, see "Creating Rules to Process Messages" in Chapter 12, "Customizing and Configuring Outlook."

Until you tell it otherwise, the Out Of Office Assistant assumes you are in the office. It does not coordinate with the availability you display when setting up meetings and appointments.

Configuring Auto-Replies for Exchange Server 2003 Accounts

Features of the Out Of Office Assistant that are specific to an Exchange Server 2003 environment include:

  • You create one auto-reply message, which Outlook sends in response to the first message received from each person who sends you mail.

  • You cannot format the text of the autoreply message.

  • The Out Of Office Assistant is active from the time you turn it on until the time you turn it off.

In this exercise, you will configure Outlook to automatically reply to all incoming messages, and then you will create a rule to forward urgent messages to a co-worker. There are no practice files for this exercise.

Important 

This exercise is specific to Exchange Server 2003 accounts.

BE SURE TO start Outlook and display the Inbox before beginning this exercise.

  1. On the Tools menu, click Out of Office Assistant.

    The Out Of Office Assistant dialog box opens.

    image from book

    In an Exchange Server 2003 environment, this is a single-screen dialog box.

  2. Select the I am currently Out of the Office option.

  3. In the AutoReply only once to each sender with the following text box, type

    I am out of the office today, with limited access to e-mail and voicemail. I will respond to your message within one business day.

    Please direct urgent issues to mary@contoso.com.

    If you're concerned that the message will be sent to people while you're testing this function, you can substitute other text, such as I am testing my OOO function, for the above.

  4. In the Out of Office Assistant dialog box, click OK.

    The Out Of Office menu and a corresponding notification appear at the right end of the status bar.

    image from book

  5. Click the notification to close it, or wait until it closes itself. Then on the status bar, click Out of Office.

    From the Out Of Office menu that opens, you can open the Out Of Office Assistant dialog box or turn off the AutoReply function.

  6. On the Out of Office menu, click Out of Office Assistant.

  7. In the Out of Office Assistant dialog box, click Add Rule.

    The Edit Rule dialog box opens. Its interface for creating rules is simpler than the Rules And Alerts interface you work in when creating rules for all of Outlook, but the Edit Rule dialog box still provides a lot of choices.

  8. In the Edit Rule dialog box, click Advanced.

    The Advanced dialog box opens.

    image from book

  9. In the Received area, select the From and To check boxes.

    This sets the forwarding rule to occur on the current day only. You can specify only a start date or end date, or any date range you want. For example, if you will be out of the office for one week, but be completely without e-mail access for only two days of that time, you might forward urgent messages only on those days. To specify a non-consecutive date span, create a rule for each consecutive date span.

  10. Select the Importance check box. Then with High selected in the Importance list, click OK.

    Troubleshooting 

    The specifications you entered in the Advanced dialog box are not reflected in the Edit Rule dialog box; in fact, there is no indication that any parameters have been set for this rule.

  11. In the Edit Rule dialog box, under Perform these actions, select the Forward check box. Then in the To box, type mary@contoso.com.

    Tip 

    If you have access to another e-mail account, either your own or one belonging to a friend or co-worker who is willing to help you, enter his or her e-mail address instead.

  12. Click the Method arrow to display the forwarding options:

    • Standard forwards the message content as an inclusion in a message from you, and retains the Importance indicator.

    • Leave message intact delivers the original message, so that it appears to have been sent directly from the original sender to your designated backup.

    • Insert message as an attachment forwards the message item as an attachment to a message from you, and does not retain the Importance indicator.

    In all cases, the message header includes the information This message was AutoForwarded.

  13. In the Method list, click Standard. Then click OK.

    image from book

  14. In the Out of Office Assistant dialog box, click OK.

  15. If you inserted an actual e-mail address as the forwarding recipient, send two messages to yourself: the first a standard or Low Importance message, and the second a High Importance message.

    You will receive an Out of Office AutoReply message in response to your first message, but none to your second message. The other e-mail account will receive a High Importance message forwarded from you.

  16. On the Out of Office menu, click Turn off Out of Office auto-replies.

    If you open the Out Of Office Assistant dialog box, you will see that your message and rule are intact, but the I Am In The Office option is selected, so no auto-replies will be sent.

Configuring Auto-Replies for Exchange Server 2007 Accounts

Features of the Out Of Office Assistant that are specific to an Exchange Server 2007 environment include:

  • You can create two auto-reply messages-one that Outlook sends only to people in your organization (on the same domain) and another sent either to everyone else, or to only the people in your primary address book.

    This allows you to separately control the information made available to co-workers, to friends and business contacts, and to the general public (including senders of spam). For example, you might include your itinerary and mobile phone number in only an internal OOO reply, include your return date in a reply to your contacts, and not send any reply to other people.

  • You can specify the font, size, and color of OOO message text and apply bold, italic, or underline formatting.

  • You can format paragraphs as bulleted or numbered lists and control the indent level.

  • You can specify start and end dates and times for your OOO message so that you don't have to remember to turn off the Out Of Office Assistant.

Refer to the previous exercise for information about features and processes that are not dependent on the Exchange Server version, including creating rules and using the Out Of Office menu that appears on the status bar.

In this exercise, you will configure Outlook to automatically reply to messages during a future time period, and to send different auto-replies to co-workers than to the general public. There are no practice files for this exercise.

Important 

This exercise is specific to Exchange Server 2007 accounts.

BE SURE TO start Outlook and display the Inbox before beginning this exercise.

  1. On the Tools menu, click Out of Office Assistant.

    The Out Of Office Assistant dialog box opens.

    In an Exchange 2007 environment, this dialog box includes two tabs: Inside My Organization and Outside My Organization. The Outside My Organization tab includes the notation (On).

  2. Select the Send Out of Office auto-replies option to activate the dialog box contents.

    image from book

  3. Select the Only send during this time range check box. Then set the Start time to 5:00 P.M. on the next Friday, and the End time to 5:00 P.M. on the following Friday.

    By using this schedule, anyone sending mail to you from the time you leave the office on Friday until the end of the day the following Friday will receive an automatic reply to the first message he or she sends. (You could also set this up for Monday through Friday, but the people sending messages on Friday evening or the weekend wouldn't receive an auto-reply.)

  4. On the Inside My Organization tab, in the message box, type

    I'm on vacation! Call my mobile at (858) 555-0123 if anything urgent comes up.

    If you're concerned that the message will be sent to people while you're testing this function, you can substitute other text, such as I am testing my internal OOO function, for the above.

  5. Select the sentence I'm on vacation! On the toolbar at the top of the tab, click the Font Color button, and then in the gallery, click the Purple square.

    The buttons representing text and paragraph formatting commands are the same in the Out Of Office Assistant as they are in an e-mail message, or in any 2007 Microsoft Office system product.

  6. Click the Outside My Organization tab.

    Notice that if you simply turn on the Out Of Office Assistant, auto-replies are sent only to people in your primary Outlook address book. You can prevent auto-replies from going to anyone other than a person within your own e-mail domain by clearing the Auto-reply To People Outside My Organization check box.

  7. Select the Anyone outside my organization option. Then in the message box, type

    I am out of the office this week and will respond to your message as soon as possible. For more information about Contoso products and services, please visit our Web site at www.contoso.com.

    When you type the final period, the URL becomes a hyperlink.

    image from book

  8. In the Out of Office Assistant dialog box, click OK.

    The Out Of Office menu does not appear on the status bar, because you specified that your Out Of Office period does not begin until 5:00 P.M. next Friday. There isn't any indicator that you've set the Out Of Office Assistant to start at a future time. (This feature might be included in future versions of Outlook.) At the specified start time, the Out Of Office menu will appear at the right end of the status bar to indicate that Out Of Office auto-replies are turned on. At the specified end time, the Out Of Office Assistant will turn itself off, and the menu will disappear.

  9. On the Tools menu, click Out of Office Assistant. Select the Do not send Out of Office auto-replies option, and then click OK.

Tip 

If you make changes to one of the OOO messages but not the other, when you close the Out Of Office Assistant dialog box, Outlook displays a message box asking whether you want to change the other. This useful reminder helps ensure that you keep both versions up to date.




Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 Step by Step
The Time Management Toolkit: MicrosoftВ® Office OutlookВ® 2007 Step by Step and Take Back Your Life (Step By Step (Microsoft))
ISBN: 0735625840
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2007
Pages: 137

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