on 8-12-2008 7:26 AM CJ Keist spake the following:
Josef, This is exactly same situation in our environment as well. I had to make the same change as you stated. Our central virus/spam email gateway also cans any message with out a valid from address in the mail headers. I would think most virus/spam systems will do the same. I understand the concept of having the from empty, namely to keep another automated system from replying back to your vacation reply, but what do we do to keep our vacation replies being canned by anti-spam systems?? Maybe this should be a option in the configuration file to let the Admin decide whether to fill in the from address field, or a "donot-reply@domain.com" default, or just empty?
IMHO if someone's e-mail is so important that you would have to notify people that they are on vacation, then a human should be checking their account everyday. A vacation message just tells me to go somewhere else, which would probably end up being a competitor. If I know the person, I probably already know they are on vacation. If I don't know them, I probably don't care.
I will let people have a vacation message, but I will tell them that they might not get delivered. If someone leaves, I alias their mail to their successor, or just delete their account.
-- MailScanner is like deodorant... You hope everybody uses it, and you notice quickly if they don't!!!!