stop Out of office for some but not all

[museudf]

Hi all

I have a slight problem hope you can help. We use Exchange 2003 and I have a Distribution list which public people (customers outside the network) email to and if one of the people in the distribution list has there out of office turned on the customer get the OFO message. Now I have been doing my research and it seems that you can only turn OFO messages for everyone and not for users or groups. Do you know a way in which I can tell the exchange server not to send out OFO messages for a group.

If you need more information then please do ask. Thank you in advance.

F

 

[ee61re]

You can allow/disallow OOO messages being sent out to specific destination domains, by creating an appropriate recipient policy.

I dont think there is a way of basing the restriction on sender though.

 

[museudf]

NOt sure how you do this. I have had a look at the recipient policy on my exchange 2003 server but do not see a way I can allow and disallow ooo messages from being sent out. Can you please explain.

f

 

[BenChristian]

If you are using a smart host (MIMESweeper or MailMarshal for example) you could delete the OOF messages as they leave the organization at a group level by performing an LDAP lookup. That is about the only way I can think of acheiving this.

Ben.

http://www.benchristian.com

 

[museudf]

I am not using a smart host at the moment, but if I want to set one up, is there a free and quick application that you can suggest. Thank you

F

 

[ee61re]

oops, sorry, I didn't mean recipient policies.

Have a look here:

http://www.support.microsoft.com/kb/262352/

Rob

 

[BenChristian]

Rob, that would disable OOF for all outbound mail. There's no feature in Exchange that can diable OOF based on group membership.

Museudf, I'm not sure what open source products are available, I'm sure someone can help you out. Most open source smart hosts/MTAs run on Linux/Unix though (Qmail for example).

http://www.benchristian.com

 

[ee61re]

By default, yes it would, because the default domain name is *.

However, you can add entries for specific destination domains. For example, you could place an entry there for abc.com, and allow OOF for them - maybe your company works closely with abc.com, so having them know when your people are out would be good.

But, like I said originally, this is allowing OOF based on external domains, rather than internal groups of users.