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10 Minute Guide to Microsoft Exchange 5.0
- Lesson 22 -
Using the Inbox Assistant
In this lesson, you learn how to manage incoming mail with automatic procedures,
using the Microsoft Exchange Server feature called Inbox Assistant.
What Is the Inbox Assistant?
The Inbox Assistant is a feature that lets you establish automatic procedures
that will be performed on all your incoming mail. For example, you might want to
set up automatic procedures to perform the following actions:
- Reply to incoming mail under certain conditions that you establish
- File incoming mail in specific folders using criteria you establish
- Forward incoming mail under certain conditions that you establish
You can use the Inbox Assistant to manage your mail, and it works whether or not
you have your Microsoft Exchange Client software open. In fact, you don't even have
to have your computer on, because the work for the Inbox Assistant is done at the
server (where your mailbox is located).
There are two things you have to do to put the Inbox Assistant to work:
- Create a set of conditions (called rules) for the Inbox Assistant to look for
when it examines incoming mail
- Create a set of actions for the Inbox Assistant to begin whenever the conditions
have been met
Creating Rules
Creating a rule is a simple process, but you can create an enormous number of
permutations and combinations to cover any (and all) possibilities. This example
creates a scenario that tells the Inbox Assistant that whenever a message comes from
the Payroll department, you want it moved to a specific folder in your mailbox. This
would be helpful if you had given an associate permission to that folder, and the
associate was to take care of all the timesheets and other payroll issues for you.
To work through the example scenario, follow these steps:
- 1. Choose Tools, Inbox Assistant to display the Inbox Assistant dialog
box.
2. Choose Add Rule, which brings up the Edit Rule dialog box (see Figure 22.1).
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Figure 22.1 The Edit Rule dialog box lets you configure the rules and
the resulting actions for the Inbox Assistant.
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- 3. In the top part of the dialog box (labeled "When a Message Arrives
That Meets the Following Conditions"), specify the conditions that the message
has to meet to cause any action to occur. In this case, you want to specify that
the message must be from the Payroll department.
Click From to indicate you want to base this rule on the sender. Then select the
appropriate name(s) from the Global Address List by double-clicking the name(s) in
the list (you can select as many names as you want). When you finish, click OK.
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Narrowing the Rule You'll have to do some homework for some of these rules
to work. For example, in this scenario, you might have one user named Payroll, which
is a mailbox shared by all members of the Payroll department; or you might have one
member of the Payroll department who is the only person that ever sends e-mail about
payroll issues; or you might have to list every person in the Payroll department
just to make sure you've covered all the possibilities.
- 4. Choose an action from the bottom section of the dialog box (labeled
"Perform These Actions"). In this case, choose Move To and click Folder.
The Move Message ToÉ dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 22.2. From this
dialog box, choose the folder you want to move these messages into and click OK.
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Figure 22.2 You can automatically move a message into any folder in
your Microsoft Exchange Server system.
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Picking a Folder You can choose any folder in your Microsoft Exchange Server
system as the destination for messages you're moving or copying. If you pick a mailbox
folder or a public folder, Microsoft Exchange Server will take care of the move for
you, even if you're working in Microsoft Exchange Client at your computer. If you
choose a personal folder (which resides on your local hard drive), Microsoft Exchange
Server will not complete the Inbox Assistant's work until you launch your software
and are connected to the server. At that point, the message is moved into the specified
personal folder.
- 5. Click OK again to close the Edit Rule dialog box. As you can see in
Figure 22.3, the new rule is listed in the Inbox Assistant dialog box.

Figure 22.3 All the rules you create are listed in the Inbox Assistant
dialog box.
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Set Multiple Rules This exercise was a simple one: You set one rule with one
condition. You can, however, set multiple rules. Perhaps you want a rule that says
"if the message is from Payroll and the subject is Overtime Reports, perform
this action." Just continue to set rules until all your conditions are established.
Turning Off a Rule
If you want to abandon a rule temporarily for some reason (perhaps your assistant
is on vacation and you'll have to take care of all your mail yourself), you don't
have to delete the rule and then re-create it. The Inbox Assistant dialog box contains
a Status box for each rule (refer to Figure 22.3). Click to select or deselect the
rule. When a rule is selected it's turned on; when it's not selected, the rule is
turned off.
In this lesson, you learned how to set conditions and actions so the Inbox Assistant
can handle mail automatically. In the next lesson, you'll learn how to use the Out
of Office Assistant to automate the handling of mail when you're not at work.
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