Poll: how do you avoid 'Out of office' messages?

Hi,

just a quick poll to learn how you filter these messages.

My own setting includes a postfix server, used on internal network,
connected to the very same Exchange 5.5 we saw today on the list.

Is it possible to add a hook directly into rt-mailgate to filter
incoming mails ?

Best regards,

J.

Jérôme Fenal - jfenal AT gmail.com - http://fenal.org/
Paris.pm - http://paris.mongueurs.net/

I thought you meant - how do you avoid them on this list – since
so many of you like to send out-of-the-office replies to the list.

I don't know if you can filter stuff using the "regular" method of 

modifying the aliases file. If, instead you made an RT user who had a
.procmailrc, you could filter stuff easily before sending it on to RT.On Tue, 14 Jun 2005, J�r�me Fenal wrote:

My own setting includes a postfix server, used on internal network,
connected to the very same Exchange 5.5 we saw today on the list.

Is it possible to add a hook directly into rt-mailgate to filter
incoming mails ?

Jon Daley wrote:

I thought you meant - how do you avoid them on this list -- since so 

many of you like to send out-of-the-office replies to the list.

And just as a side note: persistent offenders may find themselves
unsubscribed. People, please, don’t set autoresponders that reply to
list traffic. It’s not polite.

I don't know if you can filter stuff using the "regular" method of 

modifying the aliases file. If, instead you made an RT user who had a
.procmailrc, you could filter stuff easily before sending it on to RT.

rt: “|/usr/bin/procmail -t -m /etc/procmailrc.rt general correspond”
rt-comment: “|/usr/bin/procmail -t -m /etc/procmailrc.rt general comment”

then just fill in /etc/procmailrc.rt, which does any filtering you like,
and finishes up with

:0w
| /path/to/rt-mailgate --queue $1 --action $2 --url http://your.rt.box/

There are many possibilities. :slight_smile:

Not sure what you mean here:

“My own setting includes a postfix server, used on internal network,
connected to the very same Exchange 5.5 we saw today on the list.”-----Original Message-----
From: rt-users-bounces@lists.bestpractical.com [mailto:rt-users-bounces@lists.bestpractical.com] On Behalf Of Jérôme Fenal
Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2005 4:12 PM
To: rt-users@lists.bestpractical.com
Subject: [rt-users] Poll: how do you avoid ‘Out of office’ messages ?

Hi,

just a quick poll to learn how you filter these messages.

My own setting includes a postfix server, used on internal network,
connected to the very same Exchange 5.5 we saw today on the list.

Is it possible to add a hook directly into rt-mailgate to filter
incoming mails ?

Best regards,

J.

Jérôme Fenal - jfenal AT gmail.com - http://fenal.org/
Paris.pm - http://paris.mongueurs.net/
The rt-users Archives

Be sure to check out the RT Wiki at http://wiki.bestpractical.com

rt: “|/usr/bin/procmail -t -m /etc/procmailrc.rt general correspond”
rt-comment: “|/usr/bin/procmail -t -m /etc/procmailrc.rt general comment”

then just fill in /etc/procmailrc.rt, which does any filtering you like,
and finishes up with

:0w
| /path/to/rt-mailgate --queue $1 --action $2 --url http://your.rt.box/

There are many possibilities. :slight_smile:

Part of the problem is: what do you do with ones that need human
intervention? Especially if you are doing customer support, it is
almost impossible to automatically filter everything correctly.
If anyone is working on an enhancement in this area, it would be
nice to have an internal filtering mechanism that would drop
questionable emails into a holding queue that would require manual
approval before passing into the real queue and forwarding on to
the admincc watchers. The mailman mail list manager has something
similar with a reasonable set of options to control the filtering.
I’ve even considered setting up a mailman list as the visible
mail alias target with the RT gateway as the only list member
but didn’t want to deal with the extra header-munging that would
happen. This would be especially useful in combination with an
email system that has already inserted ‘spam-score’ header from
a scan before delivery.

Les Mikesell
les@futuresource.com

Les Mikesell wrote:> On Wed, 2005-06-15 at 00:00, Phil Homewood wrote:

rt: “|/usr/bin/procmail -t -m /etc/procmailrc.rt general correspond”
rt-comment: “|/usr/bin/procmail -t -m /etc/procmailrc.rt general comment”

then just fill in /etc/procmailrc.rt, which does any filtering you like,
and finishes up with

:0w
| /path/to/rt-mailgate --queue $1 --action $2 --url http://your.rt.box/

There are many possibilities. :slight_smile:

Part of the problem is: what do you do with ones that need human
intervention? Especially if you are doing customer support, it is
almost impossible to automatically filter everything correctly.
If anyone is working on an enhancement in this area, it would be
nice to have an internal filtering mechanism that would drop
questionable emails into a holding queue that would require manual
approval before passing into the real queue and forwarding on to
the admincc watchers. The mailman mail list manager has something
similar with a reasonable set of options to control the filtering.
I’ve even considered setting up a mailman list as the visible
mail alias target with the RT gateway as the only list member
but didn’t want to deal with the extra header-munging that would
happen. This would be especially useful in combination with an
email system that has already inserted ‘spam-score’ header from
a scan before delivery.

We handle this as follows:

Mail traverses spamassassin on our mail gateway (getting the appropriate
X-Spam-Flag if spam), and ends up at our RT server, where
/etc/mail/aliases contains:

tikreq: “|/usr/local/bin/procmail -a general -a correspond”
tikreq-comment: “|/usr/local/bin/procmail -a general -a comment”

DesktopSupport: “|/usr/local/bin/procmail -a DesktopSupport -a correspond”
DesktopSupport-comment: “|/usr/local/bin/procmail -a DesktopSupport -a
comment”

etc for various queues.

/usr/local/etc/procmailrc contains

VERBOSE=no
LOGABSTRACT=yes
LOGFILE=/var/log/procmail.log
QUEUE=“$1”
ACTION=“$2”

:0
{
:0

:0
|/usr/local/rt3/bin/rt-mailgate --queue $QUEUE --action $ACTION --url
http://tikreq.inscriber.local/
}

So X-Spam-Flag: Yes’d mail gets shunted into a special queue for review.

Graham

Not sure what you mean here:

“My own setting includes a postfix server, used on internal network,
connected to the very same Exchange 5.5 we saw today on the list.”

We saw today an ‘Out of Office’ message on the list.
It was coming from an Exchange 5.5 server, as I have to use where I work.
But my RT server is on a Linux machine, using postfix to receive/send messages.
It was just a matter of completeness.

Jérôme Fenal - jfenal AT gmail.com - http://fenal.org/
Paris.pm - http://paris.mongueurs.net/

Jon Daley wrote:

I thought you meant - how do you avoid them on this list -- since so 

many of you like to send out-of-the-office replies to the list.

And just as a side note: persistent offenders may find themselves
unsubscribed. People, please, don’t set autoresponders that reply to
list traffic. It’s not polite.

A reminder: much as we old *nix hands would like to think it, not ever
end-user has control over how stupid their vacation daemon is.

Cheers,
– jra
Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com
Designer Baylink RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates The Things I Think '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274

  If you can read this... thank a system administrator.  Or two.  --me

A reminder: much as we old *nix hands would like to think it, not ever
end-user has control over how stupid their vacation daemon is.

as with every other global problem caused by email software, the
answer seems to be “don’t use exchange” or “don’t use outlook”.
funny that.

Vivek Khera, Ph.D.
+1-301-869-4449 x806

Jay R. Ashworth wrote:

A reminder: much as we old *nix hands would like to think it, not ever
end-user has control over how stupid their vacation daemon is.

Point, but they do have the option to disable mail delivery for
mailman-handled lists even if they can’t control their misbehaving
responders.

Substandard software (whether their fault or foisted upon them) should
not be allowed to annoy the other 1,692 list subscribers of this list,
or any other. (Granted, most autoresponders don’t reply to the /whole/
list, but there are several that have…)