An autoresponder is a mechanism that allows your email account to automatically respond to every message that is received. Autoresponders are commonly used to provide an immediate reponse to users sending mail to general purpose email accounts such as "sales" or "admin" or when a user is absent for an extended period and wishes to let people know that they will not be responding for some time.

There are two ways to set up autoresponders.

Response for anonymous user accounts
Response for real user accounts
A response for an anonymous user is used in situations where you do not wish the public to use the real account name to send the mail to. For example, a responder named "sales" could be used to generate responses and forward messages to some other internal user account.

A response for a real user account is used when you have a POP3 user who wishes to have an automated response generated for every email received. Usually this type of response is used when the user is away for an extended period and the response is removed when the user returns.

Setting up an Autoresponder for an Anonymous User

The simplest responder type is that for anonymous users. To set this up, add a new responder from the Main Menu in the Admin Console, and fill out the fields as follows.
Enter the name of the responder. Ensure that the name does not conflict with any other POP3 users, aliases, forwards or mailing list names in your domain. For example, "sales".

Enter the owner email address. The owner email address is the email address that the responder will forward any received messages to. For example, "user@mydomain.com".

Enter a subject line and a response message.

Give out the name of the responder as though it were an real email account. For example, you might have a contact line on your about page refers sales enquiries to: "sales@mydomain.com".

Under this configuration, mail send to "sales@mydomain.com" will generate an automated response back to the sender and will forward the original message to "user@mydomain.com"

Setting up an Autoresponder for a Real User
For various reasons related to the way the mail server works internally, setting up an autoresponder for a real POP3 user account is quite a bit more complex than for an anonymous user.

The wrong way to set it up

For many people, the intuitive way to set up an a user's autoresponder is to use the same name for both responder and the POP3 account. Also, when in the responder configuration screen, the obvious thing to do is enter the POP3 user name as the owner of the autoresponder.

As logical as this may seem, the end result is an internal mail loop which causes the mail delivery process to fail. Due to the way the mail server handles messages, when the mail arrives for the autoresponder, it generates a response and then tries to forward the the original message to the owner address.

In this case, the owner address is the same name as the responder, so when the forward occurs, the responder is actually forwarding the original message back to itself. If allowed to continue, you would have an infinite loop of email that is being forwarded to the responder which triggers another forward to the responder, which triggers another forward to the responder and so on...

The right way to set it up

To get around all this, you need to set up the autoresponder under a different name than the POP3 account. Then you need to employ an alias to handle the separate delivery of messages to both the POP3 account and to the autoresponder.

The following sections describe in detail how to set up an autoresponder for a typical user account.

1. Create the POP3 User Account

If the POP3 account is not already created, do this first. POP3 Accounts are set up through the "Add POP User Account" screen in the Email Admin Console. You can get to this from the "POP Accounts" screen by clicking on "Create POP User" or from the quick link titled "New POP Accounts" from the main menu.



Click on "Add" to save the new user account. You will need to use the user name and password in order to login and retrieve any messages.

2. Create the Autoresponder
 
Autoresponders are set up through the "Add Autoresponder" screen in the Email Admin Console. You can get to this from the "Autoresponders" screen by clicking on "New Responder" or from the quick link titled "New Autoresponders" from the main menu.
Important Notes:

The name of the autoresponder must be different than the POP3 user. A good practice is to use the POP3 account name followed by the phrase "-respond" or something similar.

Do not set the owner email address. This is used only if you want the public to send mail directly to the autoresponder and the person who reads the saved messages has has a completely different username than you want the public to see.

By leaving the owner alias blank, the responder will only do one thing: send an automatic response. With no owner set, the responder does not try to forward the message. The triggering of the response and handling of the message delivery to the POP3 user is shown in the next step where you will create the alias.


Click on "Add" to save the autoresponder. You can edit the responder later if you wish to make changes.

3. Create an Alias
An alias is used to deliver the received messages both to the real POP3 account and to trigger the autoresponder. The internal handler for the POP3 account will store the message for later retrieval, and the autoresponder will generate and send the response back to the sender.
Aliases are created in the "Email Aliases" screen. You can get to this screen from the "Aliases" screen or from the quick link titled "New Aliases" on the main menu.

Important Note:

The name of the alias must be the same as the POP3 user.


Click on "Add" to save the alias.


4. Edit the Alias
You now need to add the autoresponder to the alias. From the "Email Aliases" screen, click on "Modify" for the alias created in the previous step.
In the "Modify Email Aliases and Forwards" screen, enter the fully qualified name of your autoresponder in the "Add Remote Forward" box. This is the name of your responder plus the "@" and your domain name. For example, you may need to enter something like "testuser-respond@mydomain.com".

The text box can contain many more characters than are displayed, you will be able to enter the full responder account name simply by typing it all in and letting it scroll as required. After you enter the responder email address, click on the "Add" button under the "Add Remote Forward" text box.



Important Note: Make sure you click the correct "Add" button:
Don't click the add button under the "Add Local POP Account" text box.
Do click the add button under "Add Remote Forward"

5. Final Checks
You should now have the following entries:
A POP3 user account
An autoresponder with a different name than than the POP3 user account, and the owner email address is left blank.
An alias containing the local POP3 user name and the fully qualified autoresponder name.
The most common mistakes occur in the alias. An example of an alias is shown below:


Note the alias name is exactly the same as the POP3 user account and that the autoresponder is entered using its fully qualified domain name.


6. Test the Autoresponder
After the final checks have all been made, you should test the responder.
Open a mail client and login under a different account.
Create a test message and send it to the POP3 account that has the attached autoresponder.
Wait a short while then check your POP3 mailbox. You should find a message from the autoresponder containing the response message.
Check the POP3 mailbox of the user with the autoresponder. You should find your original message that you sent.
If there are any problems, go through the POP3 account settings, the responder settings and the alias entries.

Disabling and Removing Autoresponders
Deleting anonymous autoresponders

To remove an autoresponder for an anonymous user simply delete the autoresponder from the "Autoresponders" screen. Once the autoresponder is removed, any further messages sent to the old responder name will be forwarded to your catch-all account, or will be bounced back to the sender if you have no catch-all account set.

Disabling autoresponders for users

To disable an autoresponder for a real user, edit the alias and delete the entry for the autoresponder. This will prevent messages from being delivered to the autoresponder and the automatic responses will cease.

To re-enable a disabled autoresponder, edit the alias and add the fully qualified responder name back to the alias.

Deleting autoresponders for users

If you think you will never use any responders in the future for the particular POP3 account, its probably a good idea to delete both the alias and the autoresponder. Doing this keeps your email account configuration smaller and simpler which will reduce other potential problems in the future.

If you delete the alias only, mail to your POP3 user will go directly to POP3 account inbox and no alias or responder will be used. The responder however, will still be in place and you can recreate the alias later if you wish to start using the responder again.

If you make no changes to the alias and delete the autoresponder, the alias will continue to try to deliver mail to the autoresponder. This is an invalid configuration which will result in mail delivery errors. You can correct this by deleting the alias or restoring the autoresponder.

Other Information about Autoresponders

Many users, only one responder
If you want to use the same response for a number of of user accounts, you can do it with a single responder. Set up the responder with a generic name, subject and message. Create a number of POP3 accounts each with an alias as described above. In each alias, set the forwarding account to your single generic responder.

By doing this, in the future, when you need to change the automatic response message for all users you only have to edit the single generic responder.

Please delete unused responders.

We ask that you please delete any unused responders, mailing lists or other email entries that you are not using.

Each email entry occupies some disk space on the server. Space on the server is limited and we ask that you do not use up more than you need. Email entries only take minutes to create, so by keeping your accounts cleaned up, you can avoid wasted disk usage and you are also less likely to have other problems with your email as well.