Goal
We are all familiar with sending emails to recipients and getting the instant notification letting us know that the recipient will not be able to reply because they are not in the office. You have the ability to do the same. The Out of Office reply is configured via the OWA (Outlook Web Access), and this guide will show you how to get this completed.
Access
First, log in to your OWA at http://ex.myhosting.com. After logging in, you will see your inbox.
On the upper right side of the page, you will find the Options button.
Use this button to open up the settings area for your OWA; there on the right you will see Out of Office Assistant.
Use this option to setup your auto responder. The first thing you will notice is that there are two sections: a top and a bottom. First to note is that the upper section is for members within your exchange domain, the lower section is for external senders. In other words, you can decide whether you want the response to go to public senders, or only to senders who are members of your domain.
First put the check in the send Out of Office auto-replies option to turn on the feature. After you check this option, you will see the other fields become enabled. You can specify a time window for this to occur such as hours you are not in the office, or simply levave the check out of the time period section to enable it for all responses.
Once you are done, you will need to click the Save button on the top of the page. Example of this icon is below:
Also please remember if you want your auto response to be sent to external users, you must duplicate your settings on the bottom section of the out of Office Assistant
Conclusion
Now you have configured your Out of Office Reply, you can rest assured that no-one who sends you a message will expect a response from you as they have been informed that you are not available, and will not be replying to the message until you return.