This software has been discontinued. If you are looking for a way to manage out of office messages for all users in your Exchange organization, try out the Auto respond feature in CodeTwo Exchange Rules Pro.

Managing out of office messages

CodeTwo Out of Office Manager lets you centrally manage the out of office messages from the Administration Panel. This article explains how to:

create auto-replies,
edit the settings of existing auto-replies,
delete the existing auto-replies,
preview the existing auto-replies.

Before managing auto-replies make sure that:

you are connected to the correct Exchange server,
the administrator whose credentials are used to connect to the target server has impersonation permissions to users' mailboxes.

The calendar section of the Administration Panel gives you direct access to auto-replies. In the calendar you can see:

who created the auto-reply,
on which days the auto-reply is sent, and
whether there is more than one auto-reply active for a given day.

Use the legend below the calendar to understand the graphical entries in the calendar (Fig. 1.).

Fig. 1. The Administration Panel showing existing auto-replies and the legend.

Creating auto-replies

There are two ways of creating new out of office items:

click the Add button on the toolbar of the Administration Panel (Fig. 2.), or

Fig. 2. Adding a new automatic reply from the Administration Panel's toolbar.

right-click a cell (or a group of cells) in the Administration Panel's calendar and choose Add item (Fig. 3.).

Fig. 3. Adding a new automatic reply from the calendar.

Either way, the New Out Of Office item window will open that will enable you to define the out of office message (Fig. 4.):

Fig. 4. The New Out Of Office item window.

From this window and using the Settings button located in the program's toolbar, you can:

Editing auto-replies’ settings

Just like with creating new auto-replies, you can start editing the settings of existing auto-replies by clicking the Edit item button located on the program’s toolbar or by right-clicking the item in the calendar (Fig. 5.).

Fig. 5. Editing the existing out of office message.

This will open the Edit Out Of Office item window that will let you adjust the settings of the auto-reply to your needs (Fig. 6.).

Fig. 6. The Edit Out Of Office item window.

Deleting auto-replies

If an out of office message is no longer necessary, you can easily remove it from the calendar and from the user's email client using the Delete option. To delete an existing item:

click the Delete button on the program's toolbar, or
right-click the selected item(s) in the calendar, and choose Delete item from the context menu (Fig. 7.).

Fig. 7. Deleting the existing out of office message.

Previewing auto-replies

You can take a look at the newly created auto-reply without leaving the New/Edit Out Of Office item editor (Fig. 8.).

Fig. 8. Auto-reply preview visible in the Edit Out of Office item window.

You can also use select Preview item from the context menu when you right-click a particular item in the Administration Panel's calendar (Fig. 9.).

Fig. 9. Opening the preview of the auto-reply from the Administration Panel.

Important

You need to click the Submit button in the toolbar for any changes to take effect (Fig. 10.).

Fig. 10. Locating the Submit button in the Administrator Panel.

Managing out of office messages

Creating auto-replies

Editing auto-replies’ settings

Deleting auto-replies

Previewing auto-replies

See also