Vacation
Vacation Message
yum --enablerepo=smecontribs install smeserver-vacation
Setup an automatic 'out of office' email reply.
Version
Overview
Admin (and possibly users themselves, see below) can enable a vacation message for individual users. In addition to manually enabling and disabling the vacation message for a user, also automatic start and end dates for sending out vacation messages can be set in the server manager panel.
Grant users access to vacation panel
If you install UserManager and delegate the user-vacation panel to users they can prepare and enable their vacation message themselves.
Only for SME9
If you install UserManager and delegate to users the 'uservacations', they can manage by default the vacation message of all users. However it is needed sometime to restrict a user to certain groups, or just one group.
db accounts setprop helene delegatedVacations 'parents'
the user 'helene' will be able to manage only users belong to the group 'parents'
db accounts setprop helene delegatedVacations 'enfants,famille'
the user 'helene' will be able to manage only users belong to the groups 'famille' and 'enfants'
db accounts setprop helene delegatedVacations
or
db accounts delprop helene delegatedVacations
This will remove all group based restriction
Automatic enabling and disabling of vacation messages
The server-manager panel provides two fields where you can enter start and end dates for the vacation message of a user. These date values will be checked by a simple cron script every night, in order to enable or disable the vacation message of this user at the given dates, respectively.
The two date fields in the server-manager panel are not programatically validated with respect to common-sense, so some rules apply:
- Start date has to be before end date
- Start date must not be the same as the end date (for single day holidays, set end date to the following day).
- If the intended start date is in the future (from "now"), the checkbox for enabling the vacation message should be unchecked (otherwise vacation messages will be sent out from "now" on).
If you do not want to use this automatic functionality, simply leave both fields empty.
Configuration
- Only one reply is sent to each sender until the Repeat interval is reached
Change the interval between repeat replies to the same
sender. The default is 1 week. A trailing s, m, h, d, or w
scales the number N to seconds, minutes, hours, days or
weeks respectively. For example, to set the interval value
to 3 days you would specify -t3d. There should be no spaces
between the -t and N.
configure, then apply to all users,
config setprop qmail VacationDelay -t3d or config delprop qmail VacationDelay /etc/e-smith/events/actions/qmail-update-user
- Addresses to be replied to:
All mail for the user including pseudonyms and groups will send the reply message.
User Shell Access
If a user has shell access they can use advanced vacation functions :
man vacation
Vacation responses
The vacation handling routine stores whom has been send a vacation message, it's possible for the user to generate a list of those addresses if the user has shell access.
# /usr/local/bin/vacation -s jane
Welcome back! While you were away, vacation mail was sent to the following addresses: garry@site.com Wed Sep 17 18:40:45 2008 wally@abc.net.au Wed Sep 17 18:23:56 2008
No Replies
Apart from the default no replies Vacation will also not generate a reply if the sender matches any of the mail addresses listed in the optional files ~/.vacation.aliases or ~/.vacation.noreply.
Troubleshooting
Envelope sender not allowed when using remote SMTP
It is possible to specify a custom sender domain in the "From:"-header of a user's vacation message. If this custom sender Domain is not registered as a valid primary or secondary domain in SME server-manager, chances are that remote SMTP servers will reject the vacation message (550 envelope sender not allowed).
Some remote SMTP servers will forward the vacation message nonetheless in that case, if an additional "Return-Path:"-header (using the same sender address) is set in the vacation message, eg. before the first blank line separating the body of the mail, one can write:
From: user@customdoma.in Return-Path: user@customdoma.in Subject: Away from my mail - $SUBJECT
Disable cron status mail
If you wish to disable the status mail from cron, follow the workaround given in http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7555#c26
This may be suppressed in a future release.
Also refer to http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,51952.0.html
Bugs
| ID | Product | Version | Status | Summary (9 tasks) ⇒ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12503 | SME Contribs | 10.0 | CONFIRMED | Vacation messages do not get DKIM-signed |
| 12474 | SME Contribs | 10.0 | RESOLVED | Menu entry for SM2 not properly positioned |
| 11829 | SME Contribs | 10.0 | UNCONFIRMED | wrong spelding in vacation message |
| 11388 | SME Contribs | 10alpha | CONFIRMED | warning in user-manager when clicking on panel link in menu |
| 11052 | SME Contribs | 10alpha | CONFIRMED | Warning on install when smanager not installed |
| 10708 | SME Contribs | 9.3 | UNCONFIRMED | Vacation additional columns |
| 10317 | SME Contribs | 10beta | CONFIRMED | Reply not sent to original Sender |
| 6020 | SME Contribs | 7.4 | CONFIRMED | Local delivery of email stops |
| 4824 | SME Contribs | 7.4 | CONFIRMED | vacation message format not supporting Hebrew well |