Email Auto Responders

[kilen]

I am setting up email accounts for an organization I'm working with, and they want to add email auto responders when they are out of the office. However, I have not given them access to the CPanel. Can they add/edit/delete autoresponders without using CPanel? If not, I would be in the role of doing this adminstration for them, something I'm trying to avoid. If I were to give them access to CPanel, my concern would be security of the site/email since their technical skills are low, and they could easily make mistakes.

 

Thanks,

Troy

[Lianna]

While they couldn't set up the autoresponder completely by themselves, they could do the big part of the work....

 

When an autoresponder is created through cPanel, here's what actually happens:

 

1. a folder in the root of the account called .autorespond is created if it does not already exist

 

2. a text based file is created in /.autorespond with the following (sample) content:

From: "Lianna" <test@****>

Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Subject: Out of the Office

 

I will be out of the office on Monday, June 30.  If this is an emergency, please call 1-800-who-cares.

That file is named:

>test@****

 

Knowing that, you could create a work process for the staff such that they each have their own copy of an appropriate txt file named with their email address. Have them edit the content of the file and email it to you. You FTP the file to the root /.autoresponder directory and you're done...until they change or choose to delete their autoresponder...then you're back to work.

 

A variation to that them is that you create an ftp account with access into the /.autoresponder directory and that person is responsible for the updating, etc.

 

Given all that info, maybe somebody else's brain might get creative and come up with a better solution for you.

[kilen]

Thank you so much for the ideas, both good workarounds to prevent access to the CPanel.

-Troy