Setting up Vacation Auto-Reply Messages

NOTICE: If you have not migrated off of the KSoC server to UMail, automated vacation responses are no longer available on the old system as of April 30, 2024. 

 

In order to setup auto-reply messages of any kind in UMail, you must connect to the UMail system through either one of the Outlook clients, or through the campus Outlook web interface, or Office365 online.

 

Enabling Automatic replies in various Outlook Clients

The latest Outlook clients have two modes of operation, ‘Legacy’ and ‘New’. You can quickly check your current setting, by locating the search box in the top right corner of the application window. If your client is in the ‘New” mode, a “Legacy Outlook” switch will show next to the search box.

If your client is in ‘Legacy’ mode, the switch will show ‘New’ at the top, center of the window and there will not be a selection for ‘Legacy Outlook’.

 

Outlook – Legacy mode (also use for older Outlook clients):

To enable auto replies, select Tools, from the ribbon selection.  Once in the Tools ribbon, you will see the Out of Office reply option, select it.

 

 

 

 

Outlook – Web mail:

If you do not have access to the Outlook client on your computer, you can access it via the web mail portal at www.umail.utah.edu  NOTE: you will need to enter the complete address, including the www. If you only enter ‘umail.utah.edu’ your browser will not be able to find the page.

Log into the Web Portal, using your uNID in the format of <your unid>@umail.utah.edu and your University account password. You will then be asked to verify through the DUO 2FA.

To enable Auto replies you will need to select the three dots on the far right on your window menu, → Rules → Manage rules.  If you access webmail through OWA, click on the gear icon.  This will spawn a Settings window, select ‘Automatic replies’ in the option list

You can divide the settings window into three horizontal sections:

1. Internal response: for people who are emailing you from a utah.edu address.
2. Schedule: for setting the start and end date and time for auto replies.
3. External response: for people who are emailing you from outside the University.

The separation between internal,and external responses, allows you to fine tune your responses if desired. I.E. Providing a more detailed response to internal addresses vs. a more general response for external addresses. You can even filter your reply to only go to address contained in your contact list if you wish. The default setting is to reply to all external emails.

Be sure to enable automatic replies and mark the ‘Send replies outside my organization’ box.

NOTE: If you do not enable ‘Send replies outside my organization’, external senders will not receive an auto-reply!