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auto-response for a retired user in Exchange 2003? - 5.Feb.2007 10:18:44 PM

Exch2003

Posts: 102
Joined: 5.Feb.2007
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Hello,

Can anyone help me, please? There is a user that has retired from our company and the new Director that took her position would like me to do an auto-response of this user's email. This is so if anyone emails her, it will say that this person is retired and who the new Director is and her name and information.

How do I do this in Exchange? I checked Active Directory and she has been removed. I can't find an instance of her name in Active Directory.

Can I do this in Exchange? If yes, how do I do it?

Thanks so much. :-)

Lena

Post #: 1

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RE: auto-response for a retired user in Exchange 2003? - 5.Feb.2007 11:54:11 PM

uemurad

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Here's how you do it - I'm assuming you have experience with user creation and using the ADUC, but if not, let me know and I'll be more detailed in the procedure.

1. Create a user object with a mailbox. It doesn't matter what you call it.
2. Add the SMTP address of the retired user to the mailbox as an alias.
3. Give yourself full mailbox permissions to the object
4. Create an Outlook profile on a workstation that is logged on as you to connect to the mailbox you created above.
5. Launch the new Outlook profile so that you are connected to the new mailbox
6. Create a rule as follows:
6a. On the Tools menu, click Rules Wizard.
6b. In the Rules Wizard dialog box, click New.
6c. Under Which type of rule do you want to create, click the Check messages when they arrive check box, and then click Next.
6d. Under Which condition(s) do you want to check, click to select the Sent Only To Me check box, or any other criteria that you want, and then click Next.
6e. Under What do you want to do with the message, click to select the have server reply using a specific message check box.
6f. Under Rule Description, click the underlined phrase a specific message.
6g. In the Rule Description, click a specific message.
6h. In the untitled message View menu, type the subject and the message body that you want to be sent, and then click Save and Close.
6i. Complete the Rule Wizard instructions, click Finish and then click OK.

_____________________________

Regards,

Dean T. Uemura
Microsoft MVP - Exchange (2007-2011)
exchangeguy.blogspot.com
uemurad@yahoo.com

(in reply to Exch2003)

Post #: 2

RE: auto-response for a retired user in Exchange 2003? - 6.Feb.2007 9:52:33 PM

Exch2003

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Joined: 5.Feb.2007
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Thank you Dean.

I will try it and see what happens. This seems very right to do to create this response.

After I do these steps, would I just send an email to the retired person's email to see it gives me the auto-response message?

Thanks a million. :-)

Lena

(in reply to uemurad)

Post #: 3

RE: auto-response for a retired user in Exchange 2003? - 6.Feb.2007 10:57:26 PM

uemurad

Posts: 8232
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Yes. In fact, the best test is to send two messages from the same outside account. I say this because I've seen some people attempt to use the Out Of Office attendant as the autoreply. This is fine, except the OOO purposely sends a reply only to the first message (to prevent infinite message loops). The second autoreply confirms that it will function for every message regardless of the sender.

_____________________________

Regards,

Dean T. Uemura
Microsoft MVP - Exchange (2007-2011)
exchangeguy.blogspot.com
uemurad@yahoo.com

(in reply to Exch2003)

Post #: 4

RE: auto-response for a retired user in Exchange 2003?.... - 8.Feb.2007 1:48:20 PM

Exch2003

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Joined: 5.Feb.2007
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Hello Dean,

I was able to setup the auto-response by me selecting certain people (as a test); that if those people emailed the retired users email account, then they would receive the auto-response message.

Now, the kicker is I was told just yesterday, that I have to set this up for everyone inside the agency and those sending emails from outside the agency. For example, if the retired user's mom, grandmother, friend etc. sends her email, that the auto-response should be sent back to them.

After looking at my options when I created the user email account, I don't really understand how to set this up where everyone (no matter who it is), if they send an email to this account, that an auto-response should bounce back to them to alert her retirement etc.

Would you be kind enough to tell me how to do this?

I am taking notes since you seem like a genious already to me. I don't know as much as I want to know about Exchange right now, but I am learning it.

Respectfully submitted,

Lena

(in reply to uemurad)

Post #: 5

RE: auto-response for a retired user in Exchange 2003?.... - 8.Feb.2007 2:22:08 PM

uemurad

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What you set up will respond to anyone sending a message that ends up in that mailbox. To the outside world, that means anything with the SMTP alias you attached to it. It will respond to every message until you disable the account. From what I understand of your message, that includes the personal messages.

Help me understand what you are being asked to do for people inside the agency. Wouldn't it be enough that the person's name no longer appears in the address list? Leaving the person in the address list would make it appear that she is still there.

_____________________________

Regards,

Dean T. Uemura
Microsoft MVP - Exchange (2007-2011)
exchangeguy.blogspot.com
uemurad@yahoo.com

(in reply to Exch2003)

Post #: 6

RE: auto-response for a retired user in Exchange 2003?.... - 8.Feb.2007 3:50:33 PM

Exch2003

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Joined: 5.Feb.2007
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Hi Dean,

What I am being asked to do is send an auto-response to anyone within our agency/company that sends an email to this user (the retired user). Yes, she is no longer at the agency but there are some people that may accidentally still send or email OR may not know that she has retired. So, this process you have helped me setup will automatically send a response to ANYONE in the agency that sends an email to her.

But, I must not have a setting correct because on number 6d of your steps to follow, what would my criteria be here? I think this is where I messed up. In Rules and Alerts for 6d, I selected 'From People or Distribution List'. I don't know what to select here that will answer making sure everyone within our company and ANYONE outside the company will receive the auto-response message when they send an email to this (retired user) account. After I selected 'From People or Distribution', I selected myself and another user from the list. We sent an email to the email address and then we saw the auto-response come back to us. Now, when my Supervisor (a user) sent an email message to the account, he never did see the auto-response.

Let me know if this helps.

Thanks again. :-)

Lena

(in reply to uemurad)

Post #: 7

RE: auto-response for a retired user in Exchange 2003?.... - 8.Feb.2007 4:17:50 PM

uemurad

Posts: 8232
Joined: 7.Jan.2004
From: California, USA
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You shouldn't have any criteria. If you don't select anything, it will reply to every inbound message.

What did you do with the retired user's account and mailbox? Does it still exist? Does it appear in the GAL?

Here at my company I have to disable the exited user's account (to conform to our Sarbanes-Oxley procedures), so I have to create a new account and add the SMTP alias. If you do not have to do that to the account, you can just add the rule to the existing mailbox. That would also take care of replies to previous messages.

To see what I mean about replying to all messages, do this. Within your own mailbox, start a new rule. Start from a blank rule. Step1 should read "Check messages when they arrive". Step2 should read "Apply this rule after the message arrives". Click Next. In the conditions selections, do not check anything. Click Next. You should get a dialog box asking "This rule will be applied to every message you receive. Is this correct?". That is what you should have seen when creating the rule in the other mailbox.

_____________________________

Regards,

Dean T. Uemura
Microsoft MVP - Exchange (2007-2011)
exchangeguy.blogspot.com
uemurad@yahoo.com

(in reply to Exch2003)

Post #: 8

RE: auto-response for a retired user in Exchange 2003?.... - 8.Feb.2007 8:00:14 PM

Exch2003

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Joined: 5.Feb.2007
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Hello Dean,

You have saved the day again! This did work. I also sent a test to my gmail account and I received it throught the user mailbox account I created for this retired user. I gave myself full permission rights so I can login as myself and check it (as if she was still with the agency). The message sent from my gmail account okay but I have not received the auto-response yet. I just think it is taking some time but it should be over in my inbox shortly.

Since we are on Exchange, I have another question for you. On our Exchange server, I am the only one setup to receive any type of error messages from Exchange. I keep getting the message: (The name of our server) has reported an error

queues - unknown
drives - ok
services - ok
memory - error
CPU - ok

I have a specific string in my boot.ini file but there is a piece that I don't recognize and I don't know if that is causing the memory error log.

Do you know what could be causing this type of message? Am I doing something wrong OR what should be added or checked that did not happen here?

All this got started when our network went down about a two months ago. When we ruled out which servers had problems, we went and rebuilt them one by one. I had to rebuild the Exchange server and I did. After that I had to rebuild the OWA portion of Exchange. They are on two separate servers. OWA is our front-end and Exchange is our back-end. I am thinking I missed something within the configuration of OWA that is causing Exchange to create this error?

Can you help me with this one? I would really appreciate it and I admire your high knowledge level of Exchange. That is awesome!

Thanks for any help you can provide. :-)

Lena

(in reply to uemurad)

Post #: 9

RE: auto-response for a retired user in Exchange 2003?.... - 8.Feb.2007 11:46:27 PM

uemurad

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Glad to hear things are progressing. Exchange, as with all things complicated is best taken one small step at a time.

Look in your application and system logs for warnings or errors. The message you are getting says it has a memory problem. What is in the Boot.ini that you are questioning? How often are you receiving the error?

_____________________________

Regards,

Dean T. Uemura
Microsoft MVP - Exchange (2007-2011)
exchangeguy.blogspot.com
uemurad@yahoo.com

(in reply to Exch2003)

Post #: 10

RE: auto-response for a retired user in Exchange 2003?.... - 9.Feb.2007 6:34:25 AM

Exch2003

Posts: 102
Joined: 5.Feb.2007
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Hi Dean,

There are two issues. The first one is that I checked my gmail account and I still have not received the auto-response message to my gmail account. Did I not set something for outbound messages to come in?

The second issue is the boot.ini file. You know you have your string of information and then it has ="Windows Server 2003, Standard" /noexecute=optout /fastdetect /3GB /USERVA=3030

I am not sure about the /noexecute=optout. The only thing I added that I saw that was missing when this message started was the /3GB /USERVA=3030.

Should something else be added to this path in the boot.ini file so I don't get the memory error message?

Thanks for any help you can provide. :-)

Lena

(in reply to uemurad)

Post #: 11

RE: auto-response for a retired user in Exchange 2003?.... - 9.Feb.2007 9:24:53 AM

uemurad

Posts: 8232
Joined: 7.Jan.2004
From: California, USA
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Use Message Tracking to search for the message sent to your gmail account. If it shows up, you know that Exchange at least attempted to send it - look at the information within to find out if it thinks it was successful (or why it was not).

The /noexecute=optout switch shouldn't cause an error, in fact it was designed to avoid some errors. If you don't have them, you can read about the switches at:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/information/bootini.mspx

I'm not familiar with the error message you are getting. Is that the entire contents of the message?

_____________________________

Regards,

Dean T. Uemura
Microsoft MVP - Exchange (2007-2011)
exchangeguy.blogspot.com
uemurad@yahoo.com

(in reply to Exch2003)

Post #: 12

RE: auto-response for a retired user in Exchange 2003?.... - 9.Feb.2007 1:45:40 PM

Exch2003

Posts: 102
Joined: 5.Feb.2007
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Hello Dean,

Yes, it comes thru my email as:

MSOPOST has reported an error. Reported status is:

queues - unknown
drives - ok
services - ok
memory - error
CPU - ok

Dean, I checked my gmail account and I checked the Message Monitoring Queue. It said:
SMTP: Message Submitted to Advanced Queuing
SMTP: Started Message Submission to Advanced Queue
SMTP: Message Submitted to Categorizer
SMTP: Message Categorized and Queued for Routing
SMTP: Message Queued for Local Delivery
SMTP: Message Delivered Locally to patsy.xxxxx@xxxxx.com
SMTP: Store Driver: Message Delivered Locally to Store to patsy.xxxxx@xxxxx.com

That is all it said. I checked and my message from my gmail account went to this mailbox but I (through my gmail account) did not receive the auto-response.

Do you know why I did not receive it?

Thanks Dean. :-)

Lena

< Message edited by Exch2003 -- 9.Feb.2007 2:24:25 PM >

(in reply to uemurad)

Post #: 13

RE: auto-response for a retired user in Exchange 2003?.... - 9.Feb.2007 3:22:47 PM

uemurad

Posts: 8232
Joined: 7.Jan.2004
From: California, USA
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First, is patsy.xxxxx@xxxxx.com the address of the actual mailbox that replies?

I ask because I had an occasion to set up forwarding and autoreply on the same mailbox. What I discovered was that in the Delivery Options (where forwarding was set up) I had to allow the message to be delivered both to the forwarding address and the mailbox, or the autoreply would not be issued.

Second, are there other mailbox rules besides the autoreply?

If patsy.xxxxx@xxxxx.com is your gmail address instead, it would indicate that the message got through, but perhaps gmail blocked it or considered it spam.

_____________________________

Regards,

Dean T. Uemura
Microsoft MVP - Exchange (2007-2011)
exchangeguy.blogspot.com
uemurad@yahoo.com

(in reply to Exch2003)

Post #: 14

RE: auto-response for a retired user in Exchange 2003?.... - 9.Feb.2007 4:54:57 PM

Exch2003

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Hello Dean,

To answer your question to your response:

"First, is patsy.xxxxx@xxxxx.com the address of the actual mailbox that replies?

I ask because I had an occasion to set up forwarding and autoreply on the same mailbox. What I discovered was that in the Delivery Options (where forwarding was set up) I had to allow the message to be delivered both to the forwarding address and the mailbox, or the autoreply would not be issued.

Second, are there other mailbox rules besides the autoreply?

If patsy.xxxxx@xxxxx.com is your gmail address instead, it would indicate that the message got through, but perhaps gmail blocked it or considered it spam."

Patsy.xxxxx@xxxxxx.com is the (retired user) email address that I created. It is the one that people send email to and it is suppose to send an auto-reply back to the sender about her being retired etc.

Within my Agency, people can send this mailbox email and they DO receive the auto-response message now. The only problem I am having is that if someone from outside the Agency (e.g. let's say they are using a hotmail account or their personal home account), that mailbox is still suppose to send a response/reply to them as well.

How can I get it to do that? I tested my yahoo and gmail account. It did not work properly. If I can get it to send the auto-response message to outside email accounts (external email accounts) then I have solved this project.

Any ideas??? Should I do something with the Delivery Options that you mentioned and if yes, where do I find that information?

Thanks a million. Talk to you soon. :-)

Lena

(in reply to uemurad)

Post #: 15

RE: auto-response for a retired user in Exchange 2003?.... - 9.Feb.2007 7:02:25 PM

uemurad

Posts: 8232
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From: California, USA
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In the ESM, expand Global Settings and click on Internet Message Formats. Right click on Default and open the Properties. Go to the Advanced tab.

There are a number of selections on the lower half of the dialog box.

Are you allowing automatic replies?

_____________________________

Regards,

Dean T. Uemura
Microsoft MVP - Exchange (2007-2011)
exchangeguy.blogspot.com
uemurad@yahoo.com

(in reply to Exch2003)

Post #: 16

RE: auto-response for a retired user in Exchange 2003?.... - 12.Feb.2007 6:09:55 PM

Exch2003

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Joined: 5.Feb.2007
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Hello Dean,

You are AWESOME! That was my problem. I was not allowing automatic replies to come through. I had no idea that I had to set this option. I really appreciate your help. I am a new but very eager Exchange Administrator.

I really admire your knowledge of Exchange and its functionality. Do you have any good tips, certifications or BOOKS that I could buy that will help me even better now? I have two really good books; an Advanced Exchange Administrator book and a smaller version book like a small dictionary.

How did you become so great in Exchange (other than having hands-on)? I am getting hands-on now but it would be much easier for me if I could just read and learn it before it BREAKS. (HA HA).

Thanks a million Dean. I will be in touch. :-)

Lena

(in reply to uemurad)

Post #: 17

RE: auto-response for a retired user in Exchange 2003?.... - 12.Feb.2007 7:02:30 PM

Exch2003

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Joined: 5.Feb.2007
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Hello Dean,

Here is the message I keep getting in my email inbox.

MSOPOST has reported a Error. Reported status is:
Queues - Unknown
Drives - OK
Services - OK
Memory - Error
CPU - OK

Do you have any idea what could be causing this error? I know it probably has something to do with the configuration settings for the server's memory min and max data.

In the Properties menu of the Server, under the Monitoring tab, I have:

CPU threshold 85% 95% (warning state and critical state respectively)
E: freespace threshold 3072MBb 1024 MB
Virtual memory threshold 20% 10%

Does this information help you at all? I did some research from one of my books and the CPU information was recommended. I am not sure about the rest of the information.

Thanks for your help.

Lena

(in reply to uemurad)

Post #: 18

RE: auto-response for a retired user in Exchange 2003?.... - 12.Feb.2007 9:37:22 PM

uemurad

Posts: 8232
Joined: 7.Jan.2004
From: California, USA
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The book I keep at the ready is Jim McBee's Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 24Seven.

I am not familiar with the type of messages you are being sent. I'll try to dig up some information.

Exchange is one of those complicated systems that having a lot of book knowledge doesn't necessarily translate to. I feel my strength is in the ability to think through troubleshooting procedures. If you understand what is supposed to happen, even if you can't recall the exact mechanism, you can work your way through a problem.

There's always more to learn. I've learned quite a bit here at the Forums. While it may seem like I just know the stuff, in reality I've probably suffered the same issues in the past.

_____________________________

Regards,

Dean T. Uemura
Microsoft MVP - Exchange (2007-2011)
exchangeguy.blogspot.com
uemurad@yahoo.com

(in reply to Exch2003)

Post #: 19

RE: auto-response for a retired user in Exchange 2003?.... - 13.Feb.2007 5:08:46 PM

Exch2003

Posts: 102
Joined: 5.Feb.2007
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Hello Dean,

I was doing some research on my Exchange memory error message. I know I have added the /3GB /USERVA=3030 switches to the BOOT.INI file. The other element that is mentioned to watch out for is configuring the HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\HeapDeCommitFreeBlockThreshold registry value to 0x00040000. Also, it mentioned to make sure that the ...\Memory Management\SystemPages registry value is set to 0.

Do you know if there is anything else I can do to prevent the error I mentioned to you before about the memory?

Thanks again. :-)

Lena

(in reply to uemurad)

Post #: 20