Using the Info Manager

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The Info Manager provides a means of automatically handling routine e-mail inquiries for commonplace information about your company. For example, you might want to respond to general inquiries with an acknowledgment that the inquiry was received plus a promise to follow up.

Using the Info Manager for a Single Automated Response

To use the Info Manager, you might set up a special user account whose user ID is Info. This mail account doesn't belong to a particular user, but accepts mail addressed to Info@yourcompany.com. When someone sends mail to the Info account, they receive a prepared response such as:

This is an automated response from General Sales. You should be receiving a personal response by e-mail from one of our staff shortly.

To create an automated response for a mail account:

1. If you don't already have a user account set up to be an Info Manager account, create an Info Manager account as follows:
   • Expand a host name and select the "Users" folder.
   • Click the Add User button and enter a name for the special account.
   • Click OK. The account is created with a default password of password.
2. If it's not already selected, select the user account you set up to be an Info Manager account, and click the Info Manager tab.
   
3. If you need only one automated response for all inquiries, enter main (the Main mailbox) as the Sub-area. Note that if you enter Main as the sub-area, all messages sent to the Info Manager account are saved in the main mailbox (main.mbx).

   (If you want to have multiple automated responses, see "When to Use a Sub-divided Info Manager Account" below.)

4. Turn on Enable info manager for this sub-area.
5. To forward the message after the automatic response is sent, enter a forwarding address in the box labeled After responding, forward mail to. If you are absolutely sure you want to discard the message, you can enter NUL in this box. See "Notes about Forwarding" below.

Note: Note that IMail Server must deliver the incoming message somewhere (even if the "somewhere" is NUL) after sending the automatic response. If you don't enter a forwarding address, IMail Server will deliver the message to the Sub-area you specified in Step 3. If the specified sub-area is not a mailbox, IMail Server will convert it to a mailbox for the purpose of delivering the message.

6. In the Message box, enter the response to send to mail addressed to this account.

   The first line becomes the subject line for the automated response. It must be less than 80 characters long.

7. Click Apply to save the message and enable the Info Manager.

When to Use a Sub-divided Info Manager Account

You can sub-divide an Info Manager account into more specific sub-areas that can automatically send more detailed information in response to inquiries. For example, you can have three automated responses as follows:

• one response that lists products, prices, and ordering information
• another response that describes the classes you offer to the public
• a third automated response that sends out company news

To divide the Info Manager account into more specialized responses, you create sub-areas of the Info account (such as Sales, Classes, or News) from which the sender can obtain more specific information. Then, when someone sends mail to the Info@ipswitch.com, IMail Server returns a prepared response that describes the Info account sub-areas such as:

Thank you for contacting Ipswitch. For information about our products, please send email to: info-sales@ipswitch.com. For information about our classes, send mail to Info-classes@ipswitch.com. For the latest Ipswitch news, send e-mail to Info-news@ipswitch.com.

The sender could then send a message to Info-sales@your_company.com and receive back the automated message about products and prices. Or a sender can send a message to Info-classes@your_company.com and receive back the automated response describing the classes you offer.

Sub-areas and Mailboxes

There is no limit to the number of sub-areas you can use with the Info Manager. Sub-areas take up no disk space as long as a forwarding address is specified. However, IMail Server will convert a sub-area to a mailbox if the forwarding address is left blank; this is due to the fact stated earlier: IMail Server must deliver each incoming message somewhere (even if the "somewhere" is NUL) after sending the automatic response.

Sub-dividing an Info Manager Account

To use a sub-divided Info Manager mail account:

1. If you don't already have a special account for the Info Manager to use, do the following:
   • Expand a host name and its "Users" folder.
   • Click Add User and enter a name for the special account.
   • Click OK. The account is created with a default password of password.
2. Make sure the new account is selected in the left panel, then click the Info Manager tab. You see the tab shown on page page 87.
3. Create a new sub-area or select an existing sub-area to which the response message will apply.
4. Turn on Enable info manager for this sub-area.
5. To forward the message after the automatic response is sent, enter a forwarding address in the box labeled After responding, forward mail to. If you are absolutely sure you want to discard the message, you can enter NUL in this box. See "Notes about Forwarding" below.

Note: IMail Server must deliver the incoming message somewhere (even if the "somewhere" is NUL) after sending the automatic response. If you don't enter a forwarding address, IMail Server will deliver the message to the Sub-area you specified in Step 3. If the specified sub-area is not a mailbox, IMail Server will convert it to a mailbox for the purpose of delivering the message.

6. Enter the message to be returned to all senders who send mail to this account and sub-area.

   The first line becomes the subject line for the automated response. It must be less than 80 characters long.

7. Click Apply to save the message and enable the Info Manager.

Notes about Forwarding

Here are some forwarding options:

• To forward a copy to a different user ID on the same host, you can enter the simple user ID (for example, just userid instead of userid@domain.com).
• To forward a copy to a user on a different mail system, you must enter a complete mail address in the form userid@domain.com.
• To forward a copy to a particular mailbox of an account on the same host, you can append a mailbox name to the user ID by using a hyphen. For example,

  dave-music@domain.com 
  

Disabling the Info Manager

To disable the automated response, but keep the text so it can
be enabled another time, turn off Enable info manager for this
sub-area.

More About the Info Manager

The automatic response message is saved in a file with the file extension .inf in the folder of the special account. If you want to set up the same Info Manager information for multiple accounts, you can set it up for one account, then copy the .inf file in that account's directory to the directories of the other accounts.

When a person sends mail to an Info Manager account, the sender's mail address is listed in a file with the extension .snt in the account's directory. To view this file, click the View Recipients button.

To prevent automatic responses to bulk mailers, Info Manager messages are not returned to the sender if the original message contains the Precedence: bulk header. To prevent automatic responses to list-server mailing lists, Info Manager responses are not returned to the sender if the original message contains imailsrv in the mail address.

Note: Do not send mail from an account for which the Info Manager is enabled because the recipient of the message will receive an automated response if they reply.

You can use the Info Manager and delivery rules together: you can use delivery rules to search incoming messages for a particular text string and route such mail to an Info Manager account for which you have set up an automated response. For an example of using the Info Manager and delivery rules together, see "Examples".

IMail Server processes the Info Manager after delivery rules, and before vacation processing. For more information on processing sequence, see "Processing Order".

Ipswitch, Inc. http://www.ipswitch.com

©Ipswitch 2001 IMail Server Support Center