Email Autoresponders (Autoreply)

Email Autoresponders

An easy way to distribute information about your company to your potential clientele is to set up an autoresponder. An autoresponder is an email alias which executes an autoreply executable that responds to a mail message sent to an address on your site. The contents of the response can include such useful information as a FAQ, marketing plan, or product listing.

Installation
To install the autoreply program, Telnet or SSH to your Virtual Server and issue the following commands:

% vinstall 
        autoreply

NOTE: If you are using ACE to create e-mail autoreplies, it is not necessary to install the e-mail autoreply program.

Configuring the Autoreply�
You can use ACE to create e-mail autoreplies on your Virtual Server.

You can also create autoreplies manually by following the instructions below.

Create an autoreply text message called ~/.autoreply in your Virtual Server home directory.The contents of this file will be the autoresponder.
Add something like the following to your ~/etc/aliases file (all on one line) to create an autoreply for info@YOURDOMAIN.COM:

info: YOU@YOUR.ISP, "|/usr/bin/autoreply -f info-reply -a info"
Run vnewaliases to update your etc/aliases.db file.

%vnewaliases

When email is received at info@YOURDOMAIN.COM, an autoreply containing the message in the ~/.autoreply file will be sent back. You MUST indicate an address in place of YOU@YOUR.ISP in order for mail sent to info@YOURDOMAIN.COM to be sent to you.

Other Options
Use the -m option to specify a different message file (e.g. "autoreply -m /etc/mymessage"). Be sure you use the full path from your Virtual Server's home directory.

The -f option allows you to change who the autoreply message will be from (in the example above the "From:" field the customer gets will read "info-reply@DOMAIN.COM").

The -a option specifies a user that an autoreply can reply for. The user specified should be the same as the user configured for the autoreply (e.g.. "info: ... -a info").

NOTE: If you are creating an autoreply in your ~/etc/virtmaps file for a Virtual Subhost EMail Account, the username after the -a should be the email alias in the virtmaps file as well, not the email alias in the ~/etc/aliases file.

SEE ALSO:

Creating Email Accounts

Configuring Email for Virtual Subhosts

Administration Utilities

Server Add-on Help

BOOKS TO HELP YOU:

Internet Messaging

Marketing With Email