Out of Office Assistant.. Help PLease!

myITforum.com Community Forum

Home Forums Blogs Live Support chat Search Articles Wiki FAQ Email Lists Register Login My Profile Inbox Address Book My Subscription My Forums

Photo Gallery Member List Search Calendars FAQ Ticket List Log Out

All Forums RSS Feed Subscription:

Out of Office Assistant.. Help PLease!

View related threads: (in this forum | in all forums)

Logged in as: Guest

Printable Version

All Forums >> [Server Products] >> Exchange Server >> Out of Office Assistant.. Help PLease!

Page: [1]

Message

<< Older Topic Newer Topic >>

Out of Office Assistant.. Help PLease! - 4/28/2008 12:11:25 PM

mlindsey

Posts: 401
Score: 2
Joined: 7/27/2004
Status: offline

Out of office assistant is working internally great. Externally seems hit and miss. I have double checked all the exchange settings and they all look correct. Allow out of office responses is enabled under internet mail. I have also restarted the SMTP, MTA and Routing services.

I have tested this from a few different domains. I buddy of mine from another company (email hosted with their own exchange server) recieved my reply perfectly fine. However if I send myself an email from hotmail or yahoo I get nothing in reply. I know nothing is getting sent to spam folder. I can send to yahoo/hotmail perfectly fine.

Any ideas?

Post #: 1

RE: Out of Office Assistant.. Help PLease! - 4/28/2008 12:50:08 PM

mlindsey

Posts: 401
Score: 2
Joined: 7/27/2004
Status: offline

The issue has to be on my end...

I check message history on my exchange server and I do not even see anything being sent out. It seems very hit and miss. I sent 5 emails to myself from outside domians... I see in my message history under tracking 1 auto reply sent out. What happened to the other 4? Why did exchange only pick 1 of them to reply too? Any ideas on how I could troubleshoot this?

(in reply to mlindsey)

Post #: 2

RE: Out of Office Assistant.. Help PLease! - 5/2/2008 11:05:33 AM

kdsrazor

Posts: 231
Score: 10
Joined: 1/6/2006
Status: offline

It sounds like you've already followed this procedure:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/323665

In the past, as an administrator, I have been pressured to enable this. When I did some research I pushed back because you can cause a very nasty mail loop. Also, it lets external people know that you're out of the office. Some view this as a security problem.

As for the mail loop, you can search google for "out of office mail loop" and realize why this might be a bad idea. What happens if someone with an auto-responder sends a mail to someone with an auto-responder enabled?
You can quickly generate hundreds of thousands or millions of emails and bring down either your mail server, or possibly impact your network performance.
Because of this, it is feasible that the large, external email providers have figured this out and have begun blocking them as a preventative measure. I don't know this is happening for a fact, but it is a logical guess.

I hope this helps.

_____________________________

Ken Aldrich
Senior Support Engineer
Visual Click Software
512-231-9990 x 2
supportw@visualclick.com

(in reply to mlindsey)

Post #: 3