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.

Setting the time range and recurrence to out of office messages

This article will provide you with information on how to:

set the date and time when the auto-reply is sent, and
repeat the auto-reply at regular intervals.

Important

Please note that the reference time point for the program is the time on the machine where CodeTwo Out of Office Manager is installed. Take this into consideration when setting auto-replies for users located in different time zones.

Setting the time range

If you’re setting an auto-reply for a single, uninterrupted absence, you can set its start and end date and time in the New/Edit Out Of Office item window (Fig. 1.). Instead of setting the exact hours, you can also use the All day checkbox (this feature is enabled by default).

Fig. 1. Setting the time range for the auto-reply in the New/Edit Out Of Office Item window.

Setting the recurrence

If any of your users is absent on a regular basis, e.g. leaves the office 2 hours earlier every Friday or is OOF every first Monday of the month, use the Recurrence button (Fig. 2.) to open the Recurrence editor and configure a repeated auto-reply.

Fig. 2. Locating the Recurrence button in the New/Edit Out Of Office item window.

You can set recurrence to auto-replies in three steps (Fig. 3.):

define the hours between which the auto-reply is sent (Item time)
decide how often the auto-reply is sent (Recurrence pattern)
specify the first and the last date when the auto-reply is sent (Range of recurrence)

Fig. 3. The Recurrence editor window.

Example

Let’s assume that one of your users is taking part in a 10-week training. The training takes place every Tuesday between 8.00 a.m. and 4.00 p.m. and the first session is on Tuesday, 7 November 2017. You want to set up one auto-reply that will be repeated when the user is on training. Go through the sections below to see how to do it using the Recurrence feature.

Item time

Here you can define the Start and End times for the auto-reply and specify the Duration of the recurring item in minutes, hours, days and weeks (Fig. 4.)

Note that when you change the Duration value, the End value will adjust automatically. You can also adjust it manually, using the drop-down menu.

In the example below the auto-reply will be sent for 8 hours between 8.00 a.m. and 4.00 p.m.

Fig. 4. Setting the time when the auto-reply is sent.

Important

The start and end times defined in the Item time section will override the settings specified in the New/Edit Out Of Office Item window.

Recurrence pattern

In this section, you can define how often the auto-reply will be repeated (Fig. 5.). You can configure the auto-reply to be repeated:

Daily
Weekly
Monthly
Yearly

Each option lets you specify further details. In the example below, the auto-reply will be repeated every Tuesday.

Fig. 5. Setting the auto-reply to repeat weekly, on Tuesday.

Important

The duration of the item specified in the Item time section cannot be shorter than its recurrence pattern, e.g.:

if the duration of the item is 32 hours, the item cannot be repeated every day, or
if the duration of the item is 2 weeks, the item cannot be repeated every week.

When the item duration is longer than its recurrence patter, the following error appears (Fig. 6.):

Fig. 6. The recurrence error message.

Adjust the item duration or the recurrence pattern so that they match each other.

Range of recurrence

This section enables you to set up the first and the last day of the period within which the out of office messages will be sent (Fig. 7.). Here you can:

set the exact Start and End date of the recurrence pattern, or
specify how many times the auto-reply will be repeated.

In the example below, the first auto-reply will be applied on the 7 November 2017. Since in the Recurrence pattern section the item was set to repeat every Tuesday, the same auto-reply will be repeated on 14 November 2017, 21 November 2017, 28 November 2017, etc. The cycle will end after 10 repetitions, that is the last auto-reply in this cycle will be on 9 January 2018.

Fig. 7. Setting the auto-reply to repeat 10 times.

If you choose the No end date option, the auto-reply will be repeated indefinitely, according to the specified pattern.

If you choose End by, the auto-reply will be repeated until the day specified in the window next to the option.

Tip

Use the Remove recurrence button to clear all your settings.