A Little Technology Shoppe LLC

Last Updated: January 21, 2000

Autoresponders

Email Autoresponders

One way to distribute information and to easily answer emails for 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 autoreply executable in turn replies to the sender with a message containing the contents of a specified file. The contents of the response can include such useful information as a FAQ, marketing plan, or product listing.

A presentation of the installation and configuration of Email Autoresponders is given below. After you install the autoreply executable. You can either configure an email autoresponder manually or by using a graphical interface included in the iRoot plugin.

Installing the Autoreply Executable

To install the autoreply executable, telnet to your Virtual Server and perform the following steps:
  1. Make your home directory the current working directory, type "cd" at your telnet prompt and then hit the return key.
  2. Copy the "autoreply" executable from "/usr/local/contrib" into your "~/usr/bin" directory, type the following:
    cp /usr/local/contrib/autoreply ~/usr/bin
  3. Make sure the "autoreply" program has execute privileges, type:
    chmod 775 ~/usr/bin/autoreply

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Manually Creating Email Autoresponders

Creating an email autoresponder manually is not hard at all, but it is still considerably easier to use the iRoot Add Alias wizard to create an email autoresponder. The process of manually creating an email autoresponder is described below.

To manually create an autoresponder you will need to edit the "~/etc/aliases" file on your Virtual Server. Telnet to your virtual server and open the "aliases" file in your favorite file editor. The email autoresponder alias has the general form:

  • alias: other_email_address(es), "|/usr/bin/autoreply -f NAME -m MESSAGE -a alias"

The "alias" represents the name of your email alias, you will want to change this to be the name of your email autoresponder. For example, you may want to set up an autoresponder for "info", therefore you would want to change the two occurrences of "alias" for "info".

The "other_email_address(es)" specifies other email addresses in the autorepsonder alias indicates that mail sent to the address should also be sent to the list mail address(es). Without a specification of other email addresses, the mail from the customer will not be seen.

The "-f" allows you to change what address will be listed in the "From:" field in the message the customer reveives from the autoresponder. For example, if you specified "webmaster" as the value of "NAME" in the line above, the "From:" field will have the value "webmaster@your_domain_name".

The "-m" allows you to specify a file that contains the message the customer receives from the autoresponder. If no message is specified, the autoresponder will send back the contents of the ".autoreply" file in your Virtual Server home directory. For example, if you would like the contents of the file located at "~/etc/message" returned to the sender, you would specify "/etc/message" as the value of "MESSAGE in the line above.

An example of a typical autoresponder email alias is shown below:

  • info: sales, "|/usr/bin/autoreply -f sales -m /etc/messages/FAQ -a info"

NOTE: If you are creating an autoreply for an e-mail alias in your virtmaps file, the username after the -a should be the e-mail alias in the virtmaps file as well, not the e-mail alias in the aliases file.

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Customizing Message Headers

You can set message headers such as "Reply-To:" and "Subject:" in the autoresponse by including the headers on the first lines of the message file. The headers must be separated from the rest of the message body by a blank line. For example, if you wanted to set the "Subject:" header of an autoresponse your message file may look like the following: 

    Subject: Your Information Request
    
    Thank you for your interest in our company.  We appreciate your
    condsideration and ....
    .
    . [the rest of the message body]
    .
    .
You can include any number of other headers such as "Reply-To:", just be certain to separate the headers from the body of the message with a blank line.

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