Out Of Office Autoresponder Loop Protection
hi there,
I came across posts of a long while ago so apologies if this has been already implemented or asked many times. I certainly don't see the option in my Hosting's Cpanel, running 130.0.13 with the good folks at Hostpresto.
I’m running into a recurring problem with the built-in autoresponder (out-of-office) feature: it triggers auto-replies to system and ticketing emails (feedback requests, reminders, etc.), which then spawn replies back to me, creating a loop or redundant conversation flow.
This is especially disruptive in a setup where multiple systems (hosting, helpdesk, Trello, etc.) send notifications.
It would be easily fixed with either:
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The ability to exclude specific email addresses or entire domains from receiving the autoresponder (simpler).
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Flexibility in combining filters or rules so that only “real human senders” receive the out-of-office message, while system/notification addresses are ignored. (more advanced)
If there is any existing workaround, please let me know so i can pass along my hosting's techs.
This feature would be useful to many people :)
Thank you,
Gabrio
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Hey there! I'm going to bring this up with the team tomorrow as we've had a few requests for this recently, but currently nothing exists in the product to handle this.
I'll get you more details tomorrow once I have them!
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thank you CPRex! Let's see what they come up with :) Can't imagine a simple exclude list is difficult to do for your team, totally doable!
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Yeah, this could be nice!
Also - not to hijack your thread Gabrio - it would be nice if you can specify WHEN an autoreply shall be sent (time of day, etc.).
Fx we have requests where people want an autoreply during outside business hours.
Today we do this by piping to a script that then does the logic (You could do that too Gabrio - but of course not super end-userfriendly)
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hi
No problem. Good questions.
For me the "when" isn't that critical as i have clients in Europe and US so i want the OOO to fire all the time when i set it up. But i guess that'll be also useful for people that have clients/customers only on their working hours.
Even having just the a domain exclusion would be a big improvement 🚀.
What usually happens when i come back at work after couple of days i have all these "mail undelivered" and never ending loops from hosting tickets that have been opened and closed on the back of my OOO's.
Is like my server speaking with the hosting support's ticketing system endlessly 🤖
I was just 14 days on holiday and let's just say it took a bit of time to cleanup.
thanks, really appreciate you looking into this
Gabrio1 -
I talked with the team and I'm going to go ahead and make a card for the features site so users can vote on this. I'll also manually add the feedback from this page, but I'll post a link once the card is up and available!
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That's fantastic, let's do this 🚀 thank you!
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hi cPRex
How did it go with the feature? :)
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Here you go!
https://features.cpanel.net/c/285-autoresponder-whitelist
Did you want to leave your thoughts there or have me add them for you?
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hey cPRex
You caught my eye just now, about to log off here - just "submitted my idea" and put it through.
Once this gets released i suppose that'll go in the next update of Cpanel automatically?
Thanks!
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Right now it's in the "under consideration" area, with no guarantee it will get added to the product. If we get enough feedback we'll include it! At that point, I'd move it over to the "Planned Roadmap" page and it would get added to a particular version.
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hi cPRex how did it go with the OOO feature ?
I am really getting too many of these bounces and we're OOO once a week every week. I do understand there's a product roadmap and certain features take priority but surely this wouldn't take much 🧠 of your amazing Cpanel devs to do?
set OOO active OK
email incoming from doimain X
domain X is in the denylist
do not send OOOthat's a simplification but that's pretty much it :)
Even the team at HostPresto told me "there's no such feature" yet, etc. You'll make many customers really happy and my guess is that people don't upvote because they don't bother too much.
Thank you for all your efforts! 🙏
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Right now it's only been on the features site for a week, but the site gets a lot of traffic so we should see the votes start climbing soon!
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💪
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hi cPRex how did it go with the feature? Been there from a while :)
Thanks!
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The feature was posted on October 1st, and honestly it hasn't received much action at all yet.
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Too bad, i know all the folks at HostPresto (which is my hosting) are very eager to implement that for their 1000s of customers.
Oh well, what can we do? Continue with the bounces for now then...
thanks anyway
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hi cPRex how are you?
Any hopes on that OOO protection feature, did it get some upvotes?
Still drowning in my hosting's never ending feedback loops requests when i am OOO (and i always have a ticket for them).
Thanks!!
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It's had a few more people respond to it, but it's still by far our lowest feature on the site.
However, I did make a case about adding the ability to enable and disable an autoresponder without deleting it, so if that gets implemented that would also be helpful here, although it wouldn't be automated.
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OK, cheers and 😔
Well the main thing is to disable firing on specific domains. i.e. the requests of my hosting provider asking feedback on recently closed tickets. that's the ♾ loop when OOO is active.
Wish i knew how to code this myself.
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True, as that feature would only let you disable the autoresponder entirely, not just whitelist individual addresses.
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The whitelist would be way too much work cPRex ! I would call it a disable list for those domains you know will generate an OOO infinite loop. Easier for the end user!
Wouldn't it be just a rule - email comes in, check if in the "disable OOO list" -> it is, then no OOO. It's not -> send OOO (Enabled when OOO is on).
Maybe you could even ask ChatGPT to code it for you! 😅
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i asked Chat he said:
Why this is easy to ship
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It is a small UI change plus a simple conditional check
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It has almost zero risk to core mail delivery because it only prevents an extra outgoing message
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It reduces support noise for hosts and end users
If you want, I can rewrite this as a short internal ticket for cPanel engineering, including acceptance criteria and a minimal test plan, still without any fluff. 😁
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