Vacation Away Response Feature Request - Start/End Date - Please Vote

[jdell]

Hi,

In migrating from Open Exchange to Zimbra, one of the features I miss is the ability to put a start and end date on your away-response/vacation-autoreply.

This is very nice feature that allows you to set your away response immediately the first time you think of it, rather than thinking of it a few days before you go and then trying to make a mental note to remember to set it again the next day, etc. This is also handy for those inevitable emails from people telling you to turn off your vacation auto-reply 2 days *after* you already returned from vacation ;-)

There are some additional features that Open Exchange has with the vacation auto-reply that should be considered:
- Repeat after function
- Auto-reply for selected identities (to use new identities feature in Frank)
- Add to calendar

Repeat after function: This allows you to specify an interval (in days) between which the auto-reply is NOT sent. IOW, if I set it to 7 days, if you email me while I'm on vacation, you will get 1 auto-reply, and then you could email me 50 more times, but until 7 days pass, you won't get another auto-reply. This is a smart and polite feature that shows foresight.

With the upcoming identities feature in Frank, away-response/auto-reply should enable you to select which of your identities it will reply to. e.g. you may not want vacation auto-replies to all your identities (perhaps you don't want everyone to know you are on vacation)

'add to calendar' button is just a simple way to add your vacation to your calendar.

This bug is related to bug 6849 which is just asking for different away response for internal vs external senders (which is also a great idea).

If you think this is a good idea, please vote for the bug I opened!

http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=11776