Out-of-Office email automation for MailEnable [v 0.1.8]

[someone_else]

Out-of-Office email automation for MailEnable


Download it, free of charge for both commercial and personal use: English / French / Dutch / Brazillian (Portuguese)




What it is:

This utility provides automated management of autoresponders using email. You need only send it an email, and the subject and body of your message will be used to create an "out-of-office" autoresponder for your mailbox. This enables users to create, activate and deactivate autoresponders without having to use webmail or without having to rely on administrators doing this for them.



Compatibility:

Windows 2000, XP, or Server 2003
MailEnable - All Editions



Installation:

1. extract the contents of the archive to a folder of your choice
2. in MailEnable, create a new mailbox named 'out-of-office'
3. enable 'out-of-office.wsf' as a delivery event for the mailbox you just created, using cscript.exe to invoke it, like this:
cscript.exe "C:\Program Files\OOO\out-of-office.wsf"



Use:

To enable the service, a user will first send an email to out-of-office@yourdomain.com. The subject and body of this message will be used by the autoresponder, so choose them accordingly.

The bot will then send the user an email containing a confirmation code. In order to activate the service, the user will need to reply to this message, and make sure that the confirmation code is contained in the message body.

At this point, the user will receive a confirmation mail and the service will be activated.

To disable it, the user just needs to send another message to out-of-office@yourdomain.com, the contents of which are irrelevant. Disabling the service does not require confirmation.



Anyting else?

Feedback is always appreciated.

[someone_else]

Version 0.1.1 is now available.


changes in this version:

- fixed a bug
- added a blank message warning dialogue

[NickInOz]

Wow someone_else.

That is PERFECT. It doesn't seem to get on very well with HTML from Outlook, but I don't care, I'm sure our users can manage changing to Plain Text.

Functionality is near identical to the other product I spoke of except you don't need a challenge to turn it off (couldn't see the point there anyway) and you must supply a subject. The other product inserted friendly name is Out Of Office - DO NOT respond to this message as a subject by default.

If you could tweak it somehow to do something similar that would be fantastic, if not, oh well. It is fine just as is.
As soon as my boss returns from Annual Leave (lucky him) I'll be hitting him for a payment for you.

[someone_else]

Version 0.1.2 is now available.



changes in this version:

- a blank subject will now be automatically replaced with 'friendlyusername is out of office'
- HTML messages are now supported

[paarlberg]

Do you have to create the mailboxes on each domain/PO or can it be centralized on a single domain (such as hosting provider)?

[someone_else]

Do you have to create the mailboxes on each domain/PO or can it be centralized on a single domain (such as hosting provider)?

Only one OoO mailbox per server will suffice.

You can, of course, make as many as you like (and you can also use different names, not just 'out-of-office'), but it is not necessary.

[Colin]

This is absolutely GREAT,
many thanks "Someone-else" you are a star

I too shall be hitting my boss for a donation

ME should put this in their 3rd party download links

Colin

[steve.steve]

When I set out-of-office like delivery event does not function. I have this error on postoffice log :


Event CreateProcess failed Error:193

[someone_else]

When I set out-of-office like delivery event does not function

Did you use cscript.exe to invoke the wsf file? You should make sure that the path to the file is correct, and that cscript is used in the syntax (see the first post).

[steve.steve]

Yes I used the cscript.exe to invoke the wsf file.
The Path is correct and the version is 0.1.3.



Thanks

[someone_else]

Yes I used the cscript.exe to invoke the wsf file.

Well, as long as you used cscript.exe, the correct path, and quotes it should run just fine. Looking through the forum, I see that there was only one similar problem, and it was due to the user not using quotes on the path. Other than that, I really can't say. This is a WindowsScript, so really, there just isn't all that much that can go wrong with it...

[someone_else]

Version 0.1.4 is now available.



changes in this version:

- improved compliance with RFC 3834
- autoresponse sender is now set to friendly name
- changed internal list format (to CSV)



notes on updating:

If updating from a previous version, be sure to either overwrite the old 'out-of-office.lst' file with the new one in the archive, or else just delete the old file. Do note that this will cause any pending confirmation requests to be lost; autoresponders currently in effect will not be affected.

[arnaud]

Hi someone _else,
This looks like a very cool app indead.
As my users are mainly french-speaking, I wonder if there is a way to locate the messages sent in French.
I am ready to translate all the necessary stuff and send it to you, if it sounds a good idea.
thanks for this kind utility.

Arnaud

[someone_else]

Arnaud, I sent you the necessary text by PM.

If anyone else is interested in translating this, let me know, and I'll try to help out as much as I can.

[someone_else]

French translation of version 0.1.4 is now available. Thanks to Arnaud for the translation.

Note that in multilingual environments, one can run multiple localized versions, each on a different mailbox. So one can have, for example, an out-of-office@mydomain.com bot running the English version, and an absence@mydomain.com bot running the French version.