How to set my Out Of Office message
All the server side rules, including out of office, are done through the server's web interface. If you do not know the name of your mail server, you can look it up here
This how-to describes setting your out of office via Roundcube, which we also refer to as Webmail Plus. The sieve server side rule system is very comprehensive and more details can be found here
- Go to the web interface for your mail server and click on the Out Of Office link
- if an out of office rule already exists, select it and go to the next set of steps, otherwise add a new out of office rule:
- At the bottom of the filter sets list, click on the + sign to add a new set, give it a name like Roundcube and save it. if you see one called phpscript, that is a set of filters generated by Squirrelmail, the other webmail system.
- 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.
- Tick Filter Disabled if you do not want the rule to be immediately activated.
- Click on Save.
- At the bottom of the filter sets list, click on the + sign to add a new set, give it a name like Roundcube and save it. if you see one called phpscript, that is a set of filters generated by Squirrelmail, the other webmail system.
- If an Out Of Office rule already exists, and all you want to do is turn it on, select the rule in the filters pane, edit the message and un-tick the disabled tick-box before saving.
- When you come back from being away, simply disable the rule by selecting the rule in the filters pane, tick the disabled tick-box before saving.
Testing
The Out Of Office system will not respond to emails from your own email address. This is deliberate as it avoids loops when the system replies to an email that will end up back in your inbox, as this would then prompt another automatic response, and so on in an endless loop.
An external email address can be used to test if Out Of Office is enable (or disabled), alternatively a colleague may send you an email as well.
