The ancient thread was reconstructed from Google Groups at:
http://groups.google.com/group/micr...ac921a846f8/b4cc806e52d9e2a6#b4cc806e52d9e2a6
jmolnar wrote on 08-Feb-2010:
Brian Tillman replied near 4 months ago on 15-Oct-2009:
I have a member of my group out on leave. We need to have an out of office
sent everytime he is emailed. These are customers outside of the
organization and they won't remember that the person is out of the office in
2-3 weeks. Can't it be set to send a reply to each sender at least once a
day?
Out of Office when using Exchange as the mail server will send out its
auto-response just once to each sender (based on their e-mail address, not
on their domain). When using a rule to emulate the Out of Office function,
Outlook will send just one auto-response to each sender. For the rule,
Outlook will track these senders while it remains running. If Outlook is
exited and reloaded, it no longer has that tracking list so it will again
send one auto-response to each sender when its rule is triggered. Because
Outlook forgets the tracking each time it is exited, you could use scheduled
events on that user's host that kills the outlook.exe process during the
night and reloads Outlook at the start of the next business day, but you'll
have to use a rule in Outlook to emulate OOF instead of using that function
in Exchange (which assumes your company even has Exchange sending OOF
replies to outsides which, as I recall, is NOT the default).
Even if there were an option to reply once per day per sender, how does that
compensate for their forgetfullness? You can't use software to overcome
their brain farts. If they are truly *customers* then why are you even
telling them that an employee is missing from work?
If this employee is gone on an extended absence (more than a few days), why
hasn't someone been assigned as their e-mail delegate (if you are using
Exchange, an assumption because you never specified YOUR setup)? A company
that doesn't know how to reassign tasks when their employees are absent
looks like a stupid company. The customer doesn't care about your employees
taking vacations, having babies, or getting sick. It is unlikely that they
will only deal with just that employee. They want to contact SOMEONE at
your company. They aren't interested in waiting around until that employee
returns, if they return, or end up dead and never return. If customers are
calling this employee, someone should be made their delegate in their
absence. Making customers wait because an employee took some PTO is almost
guaranteed to piss off the customers and create an impetus for them to find
a solution elsewhere. In fact, I believe the default config for the Out of
Office function in Exchange is to only send an auto-response to senders that
are inside that Exchange organization (i.e., within the same company as the
absent employee). They don't want outsiders to know the employee is gone
and they don't want outsiders to see that the company is inept in not
assigning someone to take over the missing employee's responsibilities. Be
careful when or if you use OOF (in Exchange or as a rule) because it can
give your company a bad image to your customers. If they are potential
customers, obviously they aren't going to wait and will go elsewhere.
NOTE:
Rather than attempting to hijack someone else's thread, especially one that
is over 4 years old (with out-of-sync replies back last October by another
poster that also didn't bother to notice datestamps), you should start your
own NEW thread that describes your problem or need along with the details
for YOUR setup.
