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Technical Help & Discussion => Windows PCs & Software: Help, News & Discussion => Topic started by: stopher on September 10, 2010, 19:30

Title: Outlook auto-reply - only certain week days.
Post by: stopher on September 10, 2010, 19:30

Hello,

My business has two locations approximately an hour apart. I have some an employee that goes between sites on different days and wants to send an automatic response to a meeting request if the meeting is on a predetermined day that he will be at Site B. (Most users are at Site A or expecting him to be at Site A)

Is there a way of setting Outlook rules to do this? The our office is using a mix of Office 2007 and Office 2010.

Thanks!
Chris

Title: Re: Outlook auto-reply - only certain week days.
Post by: Rik on September 10, 2010, 19:38

Hi Chris and welcome to  Pals.  :welcome:

I would have thought you could create such a rule, but I'm not sure from what you say what would trigger it. Could you expand a little please?

Title: Re: Outlook auto-reply - only certain week days.
Post by: Simon on September 10, 2010, 19:39

Hi Chris, and  :welcome:

Nothing immediately springs to mind, but I'll have a think and come back to you later, if no one else does.

Title: Re: Outlook auto-reply - only certain week days.
Post by: Simon on September 10, 2010, 19:45

You could possibly set up rules based on dates?  I'm not sure what options there are with auto responders.  Is  this on an Exchange server?

Title: Re: Outlook auto-reply - only certain week days.
Post by: stopher on September 10, 2010, 19:50

Wow! Thanks for the quick responses. I took a screenshot of what I got started with and put it at imgur.com/WpnYU

This is just an example I am testing with a coworker, so right now it is only applying to messages she sends me.

Here is how it goes:

Code: [Select]

'IF the message is a meeting invite AND it is on Monday (or whatever the criteria) THEN, it will fire off a canned message.
As you can see my condition is with 'When: Monday' or 'When: Wednesday' or 'When: Friday' is in the subject or body (or body gets cut off).

When Outlook 2007 sends an invite, it passes along some of the message info in the body of the message, but Outlook 2010 seems to hold it back. IF everybody had Outlook 2007 then it would be OK, but that is simply not the case.

Also, yes, this is Exchange server.

Title: Re: Outlook auto-reply - only certain week days.
Post by: Simon on September 10, 2010, 20:01

Sorry, this Luddite is still on 2003.  :blush:

Is there a 'preview' setting for invites in 2010 that could be different to 2007?

I'm on my phone at the moment, so can't see the screenshot, but will be on PC in a while, so will have a look then.

Title: Re: Outlook auto-reply - only certain week days.
Post by: Rik on September 10, 2010, 20:02

I think you might have to do some external processing to handle this, but let me think some more.

Title: Re: Outlook auto-reply - only certain week days.
Post by: stopher on September 10, 2010, 21:39

Thanks Simon,

I will look at the preview settings.

Chris

Title: Re: Outlook auto-reply - only certain week days.
Post by: Simon on September 10, 2010, 21:47

Sorry, I've not come up with anything else yet.  Hopefully someone familiar with Outlook 2010 will be along soon, but I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve is possible within Outlook.   :-\

Title: Re: Outlook auto-reply - only certain week days.
Post by: Simon on September 10, 2010, 22:59

I've just spoken to a good friend, who is familiar with Outlook, and he's not aware of a way to achieve this either, Chris.  What he has suggested, is to set up the auto-responder so that it includes both a mobile number and the numbers of each branch the employee may found at, and perhaps a URL link in the message footer to an itinerary on the company website?  The auto-responder could then be activated or deactivated as required.