Questions regarding auto-reply

[bradb21]

I was wondering if somebody could answer a couple (well four to be exact) questions for me regarding auto-reply.

-Will Zimbra Auto-Reply if email is sent to an account alias? I guess I could test it, but I was hoping somebody knew offhand. I'm hoping it will only reply for the main account only.

-I was curious how mailbox filters interact with the auto-reply in order of priority I guess. Like I was wondering if I was to filter a message and move it to trash upon receipt, would that have first priority and the auto-reply would not be sent. Does that make any sense?

-Any thoughts on option to only auto-reply to people in contact list?

-How about a return from vacation synopsis of who was notified when you were gone. I know Lotus Notes does this.

Thanks!

[ewilen]

(Old message but nobody's answered...)

I was wondering if somebody could answer a couple (well four to be exact) questions for me regarding auto-reply.

-I was curious how mailbox filters interact with the auto-reply in order of priority I guess. Like I was wondering if I was to filter a message and move it to trash upon receipt, would that have first priority and the auto-reply would not be sent. Does that make any sense?

I've found that if there's a filter that deletes the message or moves it into Trash (important distinction there!) and has "Do not process additional filters" checked, then no auto-reply is generated.

Same goes if the mail action is just "keep in inbox". So auto-reply appears to take effect if and only if an incoming message stays in the inbox.

This provides a workaround for setting an autoreply that only goes to certain classes of people, or which doesn't go to certain classes of people. I.e., if you can define the people you don't want to reply to based on a filter rule, then just file all incoming mail from those people.

-Any thoughts on option to only auto-reply to people in contact list?

Dunno at the time of the OP; however, you can do this now. Using the above workaround, just make a filter rule that fires on "Address in" "From" "not in" "My Contacts". Then use an action that files all that mail.

[ewilen]

Please disregard previous post. Re-testing shows I was wrong.

See Bug 6849 - vacation - need ability to respond different for internal or external addresses for a related (but not quite the same) issue.