Implementing Policy › Email Administration › How to Configure Email Replies

How to Configure Email Replies

Email notifications that you use in mailboxes are specific to replies that are sent to a contact in response to their emails. You can configure email so that when a contact clicks a reply link in an email notification, the reply email is directed to a mailbox.

Note: This setup differs from the regular email notifications.

You use CA SDM Administration to configure email as follows:

1. Create a mailbox to handle inbound email on a server.
2. Browse to Options Manager, Email, and configure the outbound mail server.
3. (Optional) Specify a notification email address in the contact definition.
4. Browse to Notifications, Notification Methods, Email, and create or update a notification method that includes the following settings:
   • Supports SMTP—enabled
   • pdm_mail [–F from_email_address] [–T reply_to_email_address]

     from_email_address

     Specifies the address that is used as the From address of the message. This address overrides the sender address in the outbound mail server configuration.

     reply_to_email_address

     Specifies the address to which replies are sent. This address overrides the reply-to address in the outbound mail server configuration.

     When a reply-to address is set in the outbound mail server configuration and no reply-to address is specified in the Notification Method, the reply-to address in the outbound mail server configuration is used with that Notification Method.

   • “$(REPLY_FROM)” keyword

     If the keyword “$(REPLY_FROM)” is specified as either address, that address is constructed from the username and mail server hostname for the mailbox. This keyword is only valid when a mailbox rule uses the Notification Method; Notification Methods that use it must not be used for any other purpose. For example, user name=dev, server name=mail32.ca.com, $(REPLY_FROM)=dev@mail32.ca.com. Only use this keyword if your mail server is configured to accept the mail server name as equivalent to the email domain name. Use this keyword with caution: If the hostname is not fully domain-extended in the mailbox configuration (for example, mailserver1 instead of mailserver1.customer7.com), it is not extended automatically by the field interpreter.

   Note: The from_email_address and reply_to_email_address are the addresses that appear in the From and Reply-To headers of the message when the user reads it. If the addresses are identical, you can specify only the from_address.

5. Browse to Email, Mailbox Rules, open each applicable mailbox rule, and select the new reply method in the Reply drop-down list. Save each updated rule.

   When the contact replies to the email notification, the reply is addressed by default to the specified mailbox.

More information:

pdm_mail Utility--Send Email Information