XCON: Out of Office Replies Are Not Sent to X.400 Addresses (317974)

SUMMARY

An Exchange 2000 user (User A) sets up an Out of Office (OOF) message, but when User A receives a message from an X.400 user (User B) who is outside the Exchange organization, Exchange 2000 does not return the Out of Office message to User B.

This behavior is by design in Exchange 2000. Out of Office messages are sent to Exchange or SMTP addresses only.

Exchange 2000 Service Pack 3 introduces a feature that you can use to configure your server to issue Out of Office messages to users of X.400 systems outside your Exchange organization. To enable this feature, configure Active Directory, as described in the "More Information" section.

For additional information about the latest service pack for Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

301378 XGEN: How to Obtain the Latest Exchange 2000 Server Service Pack

MORE INFORMATION

To enable the functionality, set a value on the heuristics attribute of the connector that transfers the Out of Office message out of the organization. To do this, start the ADSI Edit utility:

Click Start, point to Programs, point to Windows 2000 Support Tools, point to Tools, and then click ADSI Edit.
Select the connector that will transfer the Out of Office messages out of the Organization by expanding the following objects:
Configuration Container [Your Domain]
CN=Configuration
DC=Your Domain
CN=Services
CN=Microsoft Exchange
CN=Your Organization Name
CN=Administrative Groups
CN=Administrative group that contains the server with the connector
CN=Routing Groups
CN=Routing group that contains the connector
CN=Connectors
Right-click the connector in the right pane, and open its properties. Under Select which properties to view, click Optional, and under Select a property to view, click Heuristics.
The heuristic value that enables this new functionality is 0x00040000, decimal 262144. Add 262144 to the number in the Value(s) box (usually 0), and enter the total in the Edit Attribute box. Click Set, and then click OK.
Repeat this procedure for any other connectors that you want to be able to send Out of Office messages.

This change also affects the behavior of Out of Office messages that are sent to Exchange or SMTP users who are reached by means of an Exchange Development Kit (EDK) Connector (that is, users of Lotus cc:Mail, Microsoft Mail, Novell GroupWise, and so on). With this fix, you must set the heuristic value mentioned in step 4 on any EDK connectors that may be required to transmit Out of Office messages from Exchange 2000. Without this heuristic, the message transfer agent (MTA) does not send the OOF messages.