North American Network Operators Group
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Re: Out of office/vacation messages

  • From: Stephane Bortzmeyer
  • Date: Fri Dec 26 09:37:37 2003 
On Friday 26 December 2003, at 9 h 11, 
Suresh Ramasubramanian <[email protected]> wrote:

> What I said is that the method proposed wouldn't cut down on OOOs to the 
> list.

Yes, it will, in most cases. Let's take the following message:

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email protected]>
To: Suresh Ramasubramanian <[email protected]>
cc: [email protected]

Imagine that this message arrive in your mailbox. If your auto-responder 
writes to [email protected], it is broken, period. With the algorithm I sent 
(which is used in all serious responders), it will reply only to 
[email protected]

Now, this message:

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email protected]>
To:  [email protected]

Imagine that this message arrive in your mailbox. If your auto-responder 
writes to *anyone*, it is broken, period.

Now, this one:

Reply-To: [email protected]
From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email protected]>
To: Suresh Ramasubramanian <[email protected]>
cc: [email protected]

Here, there is a risk that even a proper auto-responder will write to 
[email protected] (at most once every N days, if the auto-responder is a serious 
one). But it is the only case. It should not happen but it can.

Now, with the precedence ("belt and suspenders"):

Reply-To: [email protected]
From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email protected]>
To: Suresh Ramasubramanian <[email protected]>
Precedence: bulk
cc: [email protected]

Again, if your auto-responder writes to *anyone*, it is broken, period.