How to let your users enable autoresponder rules by themselves

Learn how to allow your users to turn on automatic replies / out of office (OOF) messages in CodeTwo Email Signatures for Office 365 on their own by using CodeTwo custom attributes.

Traditionally, your users can set up automatic replies in Outlook. With such a decentralized approach, they have a complete control over the set-up, including the contents of the message. Consequently, there’s a risk that their messages might include imprecise or misleading information, be written in a careless fashion, and so on. With Autoresponder available in CodeTwo Email Signatures for Office 365, you’re in charge of setting up unified & officially approved automatic replies for all your users. For a common use case, see this article.

If you would like to:

• let your users decide when to turn on/off automatic replies,
• have control over the contents of all auto-reply and OOF messages and keep consistent branding,
• personalize these messages for both senders and recipients and enrich them with graphical & interactive elements,

you can use the Autoresponder feature combined with the User attributes manager available in CodeTwo Email Signatures for Office 365.

How to configure the program for this scenario

In this example, we’ll set up three CodeTwo custom attributes:

• the first one will allow your users to manually activate/deactivate their OOF reply,
• the second one will be used to provide a return-to-work date in the OOF reply,
• the third one will be used to provide details of an employee who substitutes for an employee who is OOF.

Then we’ll create an autoresponder rule to send the OOF message that uses these attributes. Finally, you’ll see how simple it is for your users to activate the rule each time they want to set up an auto-reply for themselves.

Creating CodeTwo custom attributes

To start, sign in at attributes.codetwo.com by using your Microsoft 365 global admin credentials. The Attribute visibility settings page will appear.

Create the first custom attribute that your users will use to activate/deactivate their OOF messages. In the CodeTwo custom attributes section, click the Add button. Type the name of the attribute, e.g. Out of office, and click ADD (Fig. 1.).

Fig. 1. Adding a new CodeTwo custom attribute in the User attributes manager.

Repeat the steps above to create two more custom attributes:

• Return date – it will contain the date your users are expected to return to work.
• Substitute – it will contain the name of a person who substitutes for them.

Once you’ve created all the custom attributes you need, make sure that checkboxes Visible and Editable next to them are selected (Fig. 2., item 1). That way, you users will be able to see them and modify their values. Finally, click Save to apply your configuration (Fig. 2., item 2).

Fig. 2. Making sure your users can view selected attributes and change their values.

As the CodeTwo custom attributes are configured, you can now sign out of the User attributes manager.

Configuring the OOF automatic reply

Now, you need to configure an autoresponder rule that will be responsible for sending OOF replies. Begin with signing in at app.codetwo.com. Click the CREATE RULE button and select Autoresponder (Fig. 3.). In the Name step, provide name for the rule, e.g. OOF message, and optional description.

Fig. 3. Creating a new autoresponder rule.

Move on to the Reply from step. In the upper section (top list), go to Add > Azure AD filter (Fig. 4.).

Fig. 4. Choosing the Azure AD filter condition.

Configure the Azure Active Directory filter as follows:

• Click the User AD field drop-down list and choose the custom attribute that is used to activate OOF replies. In our example, this will be Out of office (Fig. 5., item 1).
• Choose Equals as the Operator (Fig. 5., item 2).
• Type yes in the Value text field (Fig. 5., item 3).
• Click the Add to list button to add the condition (Fig. 5., item 4).
• Click OK to finish (Fig. 5., item 5).

With this condition added, the autoresponder rule will be activated only for users who type yes as the value for the Out of office custom attribute, as highlighted later.

Fig. 5. Adding the condition that activates the rule.

In the Reply to step, you can specify users / email addresses to whom the auto-replies will be sent. Possibly, the best and safest option is to choose All users (Fig. 6.). Alternatively, you can narrow users down e.g. to your organization, customers (external users) or specific AD group only.

Fig. 6. Specifying who will get the OOF message from your user(s).

For the basic use scenario, you don’t have to configure anything in the Keywords step. Learn more about using keywords

The next thing to configure is the limit of autoreplies sent to the original sender in a given timeframe. To achieve this, go to the Limiter step.

In our scenario, it is reasonable to send just one auto-reply per day, as it should be sufficient for a sender to learn about the fact that the user they tried to contact is out of office (Fig. 7., item 2).

Fig. 7. Configuring the Limiter.

The Design step allows you to configure different aspects of the auto-reply message. Usually, the default settings for the From, To, Subject, and Behavior options should be OK for most of the scenarios, including this one. Still, you might want to e.g. modify the subject of an original message to include the phrase I’m out of office: in front of it (Fig. 8., item 2). To learn about the settings available in this step in detail, consult this article.

Next, click the Edit reply message button (Fig. 8., item 3) to launch the template editor and start designing the OOF reply visually.

Fig. 8. Specifying different aspects of the OOF reply message.

After you’ve opened the template in the editor, you can select one of the professionally designed templates available in our software and adjust it to your needs or create an OOF message template from scratch. Either way, you should take the following aspects into account:

• Type the generic OOF message that will work for all users in your organization.
• Use the remaining CodeTwo custom attributes you created in the appropriate places of the message. To insert the attributes, click Placeholder > Message Sender >Additional attributes and choose your custom attribute from the list (Fig. 9.).

  
  Fig. 9. Inserting the CodeTwo custom attribute into the OOF reply template.

• Use the Remove empty placeholder option to surround the inserted custom attributes (with accompanying phrases) with RT tags, as shown in Fig. 10. This way, you can avoid unnecessary empty spaces in the OOF reply if a user forgets to enter values for some custom attributes. Learn more about this feature
• CodeTwo Email Signatures for Office 365 gives you an advantage over the native solutions in terms of personalization. That’s why, it might be a good idea to include your standard company signature in the auto-reply message to keep consistency with your branding.

The final version of your OOF auto-reply message may look like the one shown in Fig. 10. below:

Fig. 10. The complete OOF reply message template.

Once you’re OK with your design, click Apply & Close to save the OOF template and close the editor.

Finally, click Save & Publish to apply the entire configuration of your autoresponder rule.

Result

Once you’ve set everything up, you can send the following instructions to your users:

When a user in your organization enables autoreplies (and provides information in the remaining fields) according to the above instructions from you, each person that sends an email to their mailbox during the absence will receive the OOF reply, as shown in Fig. 13.

Fig. 13. A sample OOF auto-reply sent to a person contacting your user who is not at work.

See also

How to let your users manage their contact information - see how you can allow your users to decide which details they want to show in their signatures, disclaimers and automatic replies.

How to allow your users choose their default signature - learn how people from your organization can make use of a CodeTwo custom attribute (once you've configured it for them) to select the preferred signature of theirs.