1. Kansas State University
  2. »Division of Communications and Marketing
  3. »K-State Today
  4. »IT Solutions: Setting up out-of-office messages in Zimbra

K-State Today

May 29, 2012

IT Solutions: Setting up out-of-office messages in Zimbra

Submitted by IT Help Desk

Question: I would like to set up an out-of-office message in Zimbra to automatically reply to people who send me messages while I am on vacation or away for an extended period of time. However, I don’t want the auto-reply message to be sent to every email address. Is there a way to customize auto-reply with a filter to keep my vacation notice from being sent to certain senders such as LISTSERV(s)?

Answer: The auto-reply feature is designed to notify all senders that you have received their email but are unavailable to respond during a specified time frame. The feature sends a message to each sender only once a week, no matter how many messages they email you during your designated away period. Unfortunately, with Zimbra, filters are not processed before the auto-reply feature, so filtering messages will not redirect messages away from your primary inbox before the out-of-office message is sent to your sender. For this reason, creating filters is not recommended as a solution.

For details, see the full article in the IT News blog.