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.

Quick guide

This article describes how to set up an out of office message. The example below shows how to start working with CodeTwo Out of Office Manager connected to an on-premises Exchange server.

This article contains the following sections:

Choosing the Exchange server

Before you can apply auto-replies to your users' accounts, you need to connect to the Exchange server to make use of your company's data. The program supports connections to an on-premises Exchange server or Office 365 (Fig. 1.).

OOOM - 1st step of Exchange Server wizard.
Fig. 1. Choosing the Exchange server connection.

The program has a built-in Target server connection wizard that will guide you through the process of configuring the connection. The wizard starts automatically when you open the program for the first time. You can also open it by clicking the Connection button located on the Administration Panel's toolbar if you want to set up the connection with a different server or edit the existing connection (Fig. 2.).

OOOM Connection button
Fig. 2. Locating the Connection button.

Connecting to the Exchange server

Info

By way of example, this section contains summary information on connecting to the on-premises Exchange server located in the same domain. For detailed information on connecting to an on-premises Exchange server, located either in the same or another domain, or to Office 365, follow the relevant link from this article.

When connecting to the server located inside your domain, in the Server connection step choose the Autodiscover option that will locate the server automatically (Fig. 3.). Click Next.

OOOM Autodiscover
Fig. 3. Locating the Exchange server using the Autodiscover option.

In the next step, enter the target server administrator's UPN and the password (Fig. 4.). Use the Browse button to change the UPN entered automatically by the program.

OOOM - 2nd step of Exchange Server wizard.
Fig. 4. Choosing the Administrator's UPN.

Click Next to move on to the Verification stage. The program will now check if all the settings are correct (Fig. 5.).

OOOM - Connection to Exchange verified.
Fig. 5. Verifying the connection settings.

In case of any issues, see the Troubleshooting section of this manual.

Creating an out of office message for a chosen user

After connecting to your Exchange server, a list of all your users will be displayed in the main window of the Administrator's Panel (Fig. 6.).

OOOM - Users listed.
Fig. 6. List of all users in the Administration Panel.

To create a new auto-reply you can either:

  • right-click a cell (or a group of cells) in the calendar and choose Add item, or
  • select a user (or a group of users) and click the Add button on the Administration Panel's toolbar (Fig. 7.).
OOOM - Create new auto reply.
Fig. 7. Creating a new auto-reply.

The New Out Of Office item window will open. Here you can decide if the auto-reply is sent inside or outside your organization. By default, both these options are set (Fig. 8.). To find out more about setting up out of office messages for internal and external recipients, see the article on internal and external out of office messages.

OOOM - Choose auto reply recipients.
Fig. 8. Choosing the recipients of out of office messages.

In the same window click the Edit button located at the bottom to start designing the auto-reply. The OOF Message Template Editor will open. The editor allows you to choose the type and size of fonts, add dynamic fields, tables and hyperlinks, etc. To save the newly created template click the Save & Close button located in the upper-left corner of the editor (Fig. 9.). This will also close the editor.

Template editor.
Fig. 9. Saving an auto-reply in the OOF Message Template Editor.

Back in the New Out Of Office item window, define when the auto-reply is sent and click OK (Fig. 10.). If a user is absent on a regular basis, e.g. every Monday or every first Friday of the month, you can set recurrence to the item by clicking the Recurrence button. Read more about setting recurrence in this article.

Defining the autoresponders' time ranges.
Fig. 10. Defining the time range for auto-replies.

Important

For the auto-replies to take effect, click the Submit button located in the upper-left corner of the Administration Panel (Fig. 11.).

OOOM submit button
Fig. 11. Locating the Submit button.

See also

Managing out of office messages - this article describes how to create and schedule out of office messages.

In this article

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