Using the Info Manager

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The Info Manager provides a way to automatically handle e-mail inquiries for basic information about your company. For example, you may want to respond to general inquiries with an acknowledgment that the inquiry was received and 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 does not 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 will be receiving a personal response by e-mail from one of our staff.

To create an automated response for a mail account:

1. If you do not 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 Add User and enter a name for the special account.
   • Click OK. The account has a default password of password.
   • Select the user account you set up to be an Info Manager account, and click the Info Manager tab.
     
2. 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.)

3. Turn on Enable info manager for this sub-area.
4. 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 delete the message, you can enter NUL in this box. Virtual hosts without an IP address must enter the full address, such as user-NUL@hostname.com, in this box, to delete the message.

   Note: IMail Server must deliver incoming messages somewhere (even if it 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 specified in Step 3. If the sub-area is not a mailbox, IMail Server will convert it to a mailbox to deliver the message.

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

The first 80 characters entered in the Message box are used as the subject of the message, and are displayed in the subject field.

The text entered in the Message box is only truncated for the Subject field of the message. The entire text will appear in the body of the message.

6. 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 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
• one response that describes the classes you offer to the public
• one 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, send an e-mail to Info-sales@ipswitch.com. For information about classes, send mail to Info-classes@ipswitch.com. For Ipswitch news, send an e-mail to Info-news@ipswitch.com.

The sender can then send a message to Info-sales@ipswitch.com and receive back the automated message about products and prices. A sender can also send a message to Info-classes@ipswitch.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 because IMail Server must deliver each incoming message somewhere (even if it is to NUL) after sending the automatic response.

Sub-dividing an Info Manager Account

To use a sub-divided Info Manager mail account:

1. If you do not 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 76.
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 the note below.

   Note: IMail Server must deliver incoming messages somewhere (even if it is NUL) after sending an automatic response. If you do not enter a forwarding address, IMail Server delivers the message to the Sub-area you specified in Step 3. If the specified sub-area is not a mailbox, IMail Server converts it to a mailbox to deliver 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

• 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 of: 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 to 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 an extension of .inf in the folder of the special account. If you want to set up the same Info Manager information for multiple accounts, you can copy the .inf file from one account's directory to the directories of 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 View Recipients.

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 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. For example, 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 "Some circumstances in which delivery rules are useful are:".

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 2004