ACE Manual

Autoresponder Manager

An autoresponder is a program that automatically responds to e-mail messages that are sent to it by sending out a default message. Because an autoresponder is really just a program run from an alias, the autoresponder will be displayed in the aliases list after it is added. You can spot an autoresponder because it gives the name of the program that will be run as "/usr/bin/autoreply". To show what this looks like, an autoresponder has been selected in the window shown to the right.

Creating an autoresponder

To add an autoresponder, click on the "Add" button at the bottom of the the Autoresponders Manager. This brings up a dialog, like the one at right, for adding an autoresponder.

The "Auto Responder/Alias Name:" text field is the name of the autoresponder. For example, typing "support" in this text field causes all e-mail that is sent to "support@yourdomain.com" to be sent to the autoresponder. If you intend to have this autoresponder answer for an address specified in a virtmaps file, then you will need to follow the special instructions for virtmaps below.

The "Reply To:" text field is used to specify where the autoresponder sends it's automatic reply. If you leave this blank, then the message will be sent as a reply to the person who sent email to the autoresponder. This is normally how you would want the autoresponder to function.

Use the "Forward Incoming Messages To:" text field to set the e-mail address that the original e-mail also gets forwarded to. This allows a human to receive (and thereby monitor) all the requests that were sent to the autoresponder.

The "Message location:" choice allows you to specify where the default message for this autoresponder comes from. If the choice is "/.autoreply" or a file as specified by the user in the "File Location:" text field, then the autoresponder will try to send the contents of that file as the reply message.

Note: If you choose to store the response in a file, be sure that you have stored the file on your virtual server before creating the autoresponder. Mail sent to the autoresponder address could be lost or mangled if the address is used before the file actually exists.

If the choice is for the "Message:" then the contents of that text field are copied to the virtual server and placed in a file in the virtual server's ~/etc directory. The file name is the name of the responder concatenated with the string ".autoreply". This is obviously the safest method to use, since the response file is automatically created for you.

When you are done providing the details of the autoresponder, click the "Add" button to have ACE create the autoresponder on your server. If you click the "Cancel" button, then ACE will abort the operation, close the dialog, and make no changes on the virtual server.

Virtmaps and autoresponders

The autoresponders you create will have return addresses that go directly to the virtual server, and not a virtmap. For a virtual subhost user, this will not be desirable. The solution is simple. After you create the autoresponder, select it in the aliases manager. You'll see something like this:

"|/usr/bin/autoreply -a test -m /.autoreply"

The if this is on the virtual server "tester.someplace.net", then the return address will be "test@tester.someplace.net". Suppose that the autoresponder is actually answering inquiries to the virtmap address "testinfo@testers.com", with the virtmap set up like this:

testinfo@testers.com    test

To get the desired return address from the autoresponder, you need to modify the alias. You would change it to read like this:

"|/usr/bin/autoreply -a testinfo@testers.com -m /.autoreply"

The key is that the autoresponder will list the email address which follows "-a" as the return address for the automatically generated response. Although the panel for adding autoresponders doesn't allow you to set the "-a" address to be different than the alias' name, you can do it manually by modifying the alias.

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