How to set my Out Of Office message

There are two ways of setting up an out of office message on our servers.

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Filter Rule (Sieve)

Enable/Disable Auto Response message (Out of Office) via Sieve Filter Rules

Via Squirrelmail (aka Webmail Basic)

Initial Setup (First use only)

1. In the main Webmail interface, click on Filters (Top right hand side of the page).
2. Click on Add a new Rule
   • In the Conditions section, click the arrow next to Message to expand the drop box and choose Always.
   • In the "Action" section, tick Vacation / Autoresponder, and complete the Subject (optional), Addresses (required), Days (required, default setting of 7 is usually fine) and Message.
3. At the bottom press button, tick Enabled if you want to the Out Office Office to be activate, and click on Add new Rule to save.

Enable or Disable

1. In the main Webmail interface, click on Filters (Top right hand side of the page).
2. Locate the out Of Office Rule and select it by ticking the box, and click on Enable (or Disable) at the bottom of the page.

Editing the message

1. In the main Webmail interface, click on Filters (Top right hand side of the page).
2. Locate the out Of Office Rule and click on Edit.
3. Edit the message and click on Apply Changes at the bottom of the page.

Via Roundcube (Webmail Plus)

1. In the main window, click on Personal Settings (top right) and then select Filters from the tabs that are displayed.
   • On the left hand side you will see a list of filter sets. Only one set can be active at a time, but each set can have multiple rules. if you see one called phpscript, this is a filter set created by Squirrelmail (the more basic webmail system).

Initial Setup (First use only)

1. At the bottom of the filter sets list, click on the + sign to add a new set.
   • Give the new set a meaningful name, and do not import rules from another set.
2. With the new filter set selected, add a new filter by clicking on the + sign at the bottom of the list of filters.
   • Give the new rule a meaningful name like Out Of Office.
   • In For Incoming Mail, select All Messages
   • In execute the following actions, select Reply With Message.
   • Complete the Message Body, Message Subject, Additional list of recipient e-mails (with all your email addresses that you want this message to apply to (If you have more than one email address you can have a different response for each), and Days.
3. Tick Filter Disabled if you do not want the rule to be immediately activated.
4. Click on Save.

Enable and Disable

1. If the Filter Set name with the Out Of Office rule is not in bold, click on the image of the Cog at the bottom, and select Enable/Disable.
2. To Enable/Disable an individual rule, use the Cog at the bottom of the Filters list. If it is active it will be in Bold, else it will be in Grey.

Editing the message

1. Select the Filter Set, and then the Filter and the rule will appear on the right. Make your modifications and click on Save.

More about Sieves Filter Rule

When you click on Add a New Rule and you will be presented with a page with three main sections:

The sieve server side rule system are very comprehensive and more details can be found here

1. Condition...

   In this section you set the conditions that need to be met in order for the rule to apply. This can be very useful when you have multiple email addresses and would like different replies depending on who the incoming message was sent to, or would like a different message to internal staff, perhaps indicating how they could hold of you in an emergency.

   Most of the time, however, you just want a "match all" condition. This can be done by selecting Headers from the first drop down, To or CC from the second drop down, matches wildcard from the third, and then an asterisk (*) in the final box. This will match all incoming emails with a To address or CC address, which should be every email.

2. Action...

   In this section there are six options. As you select one you may get additional options, but in this case we want to select Vacation. You need to fill in the reply message, as well as set the number of days the system remembers addresses it has already send replies to. You also need to list your email addresses, as you may have some aliased to your mailbox that should not trigger a response.

3. More Actions...

   In the last section you can disable the rule, which is all you would normally do when you return, and you can also stop any further rules from running (based on the sequence set in the main filter list page). The other options are usually used in other actions.

Auto Response (Depricated)

Log in to your email account using webmail (Instructions). There should be a link across the top of the page to Auto Response. You will also find a link to it in Options.

There are three sections to this settings:

1. Forward.

   In this section, if you add an email address to the To box, and tick the option, all emails to you will be forwarded to that address.

2. Reply.

   There are four parts to this section. When the Reply feature is enabled it will reply to all emails send to the addresses in the alias box, with the message in the Subject and Message boxes. The system will only send one reply to each sender, in each cycle of being used, but if you also tick Empty Reply Cache the records of who has been responded to will be emptied, so if you just need to change your message you can use this option rather than disabling and then re-enabling the auto-response.

3. Keep A Copy Here.

   You should normally keep this ticked at all times. The only time you might want to use this option is on the mailbox of a user who no longer works for you. You should also always use the unfiltered option as we do not use the auto-response spam filter.

It is very important to click on the FINISH button to save your changes and to active the settings. When you click this button the page will reload, and at the top it will confirm your new settings.