ADvisory [m=message] [address address ...]
advisory
ad m="On Vacation till September"
The ADvisory command lets you set up a warning that is displayed to anyone sending you mail. Typically, you use this to let others know that you are not going to be reading your mail for a while (e.g., because you have gone on vacation).
ADvisory sets up an Outbound message that is displayed to anyone who sends you mail while the advisory is in effect. The command
ADvisory m="message"
uses the given message string as your advisory. If you just issue the command
ADvisory
MAIL8 prompts you to enter your advisory message, in the same way that MAIL8 prompts for a message being sent to someone with the To command. The maximum length of an advisory message is 10 lines. As always, you end the message by typing a line that consists only of a dot.
If you specify one or more addresses on the ADvisory command line, as in
advisory rhood
MAIL8 does not send the advisory message to those users if and when you receive mail from them. This is useful if you're a regular recipient of group mailings (e.g. newsletters) and don't want to bother the sender each time you receive such a mailing. Addresses may be specified as true addresses or aliases. Note that MAIL8 looks at the sender's real login ID, so it doesn't matter if the sender has used NewBox to switch to another mailbox.
If you enter MAIL8 while you have an advisory in effect, you see the message
You have an Advisory message defined.
You may read an advisory message with the Print +Outbound command, as explained in the description of Print in "expl mail summary". The command Summary +Outbound on your advisory message displays the names of users who have received the advisory.
You may get rid of an advisory using the Delete +Outbound command, as explained in "expl mail delete". If you want to protect your advisory message from accidental deletion, you can change it into a memo using the MODify command; see the explanation of MODify in "expl mail modify".
Using ADvisory to create a new advisory message always gets rid of an old advisory, even if you turned the old one into a memo using MODify. Thus you may also get rid of your advisory message by setting the message to nothing, as in
advisory m=
This always gets rid of the advisory message, whether or not you have changed the message into a memo.
When MAIL8 sends out an advisory message, it gives the message a header line of the form
Precedence: bulk
If an incoming message contains a header line of the form
Precedence: bulk
or
Precedence: junk
MAIL8 does not return an advisory message to the sender. This avoids sending advisory messages back and forth.
We recommend that you only create advisory messages when you have important information to pass on to senders (for example, that you will be out of the office for some time). Senders will be annoyed if you create unnecessary advisories like, "Thanks for sending me mail."
Copyright © 1997, Thinkage Ltd.