Scenario: You need a distribution group to send a ‘specific’ reply message back to the sender, every time a sender sends to it. An Out-of-Office message will not do because it will only send a reply one time.
Note: Distribution Groups do not have this functionality, however there is a work around with using a shared mailbox.
Solution:
1. Create a Shared Mailbox that will host sending the reply messages. We will call it: ReplyMessage@steveman.com
2. Log into an Outlook client as the shared mailbox and create the following inbox rule:
“Apply this rule after the message arrives
have server reply using “blah blah blah“
3. Even though this is a Inbox Rule, set your Distribution Group so it allows sending Out-of-Office (OOF) messages which is turned off by default. This is required for return messages:
Set-DistributionGroup DL01@steveman.com -SendOofMessageToOriginatorEnabled:$true
4. Create a Transport Rule OR add that shared mailbox to your distribution list. I chose the Transport Rule because it is cleaner to the end users — they wont start asking questions about this new account. We are using the AnyOfToCCHeader to trigger the rule if it the Distribution list is sent to.
New-TransportRule -name “BCC_Reply” -AnyOfToCCHeader DL01@steveman.com -blindcopyto ReplyMessage@steveman.com
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