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Vacation Rules in GroupWise

You can make a rule for times that you leave on vacation and cannot get to your email.  When you receive an e-mail, GroupWise can automatically respond with a quick message about where you are and how long you will be gone. 

First, open up the Rules window and click New Rule.  Name the rule Vacation, select New Mail (1), and check the Received (2) and Mail (3) boxes.  Then click on Define Conditions (4).

A vacation rule, or auto-reply, can sometimes overwhelm senders with unwanted e-mailed. We can set certain conditions that will help ensure that an automated response is appropriate:

• Set a condition where "To" contains your last name (see example below). This condition ensures that replies are sent only to personal messages, and NOT to mass e-mails such as listserv or other automated e-mails.

• Set a condition where "Subject" does not contain "re:" (see example below). Such messages are replies to messages you and others have sent; an automatic reply is often more annoying than useful in such cases.

We want to combine these conditions with "And" because we want both of them to be true for the mail we reply to.  Our condition window would look like this:

Click OK.

In the Action section of the New Rule window, click Add Action and go down to Reply.  When prompted, click Reply to Sender and click OK. Then you get a window to compose your message. 

When you are done with your message, click OK and you will be sent back to the New Rule window.  Click OK and Save to finish. 

NOTE: If you like a particular variation of a vacation rule, then don't waste it.  Just use the check box from the Rules window to disable it until the next time you are away.