This Domino architect got in a spot of trouble when the auto-responder agent he created worked a little too well. Read more to find out what happened when the head honcho ordered our hero to get a handle on his pesky agent.
My first week at my current employer, I was asked to create an "auto-responder" for our "careers" e-mail account.
The idea was to reply to any e-mail messages that were sent to this account with a "Thank you for your interest" message. I created an agent called "OppAutoReply" and set it to trigger "before new mail arrives" with the following code:
Sub Initialize
Dim session As New NotesSession
Dim db As NotesDatabase
Dim doc As NotesDocument
Dim smtp2 As NotesDocument
Set db = session.CurrentDatabase
Set doc = New NotesDocument( db )
Set smtp2 = session.DocumentContext
Ifrom = smtp2.from(0)
doc.Form = "Memo"
doc.INetFrom = "opportunity@domain.com"
doc.SendTo = smtp2.from(0)
doc.Subject = "COMPANY NAME - Resume Received"
Set body = New NotesRichTextItem(doc, "Body" )
Call body.AppendText("Thank you for your interest in pursuing employment opportunities etc...")
Call body.addnewline(3)
Call body.AppendText("Regards,")
Call body.addnewline(2)
Call body.AppendText("COMPANY Recruitment Team")
Call doc.Send( False )
End Sub
Now this worked perfectly...until I get a call from the president of the company. He was wondering why I was sending him an e-mail message regarding his resume.
Apparently, the recruiter was scheduling meetings from this account (as to not "block out" his time). When a hiring manager would accept/decline the meeting, he would get the auto-response.
So, red-faced, I added an If statement to only reply to e-mails that contained an @ in the From field.
OH BUT WE'RE NOT DONE YET! Two weeks later I get a call from the recruiter that the mail database had about 700 e-mail messages in it and adds 20 more every time he hits refresh.
Apparently a job posting Web site sent an e-mail message with a bad ReplyTo address. My agent sent the auto-response; the response generated a nondel; the nondel generated an auto-response and so on and so on!
So I set the ReplyTo to "postmaster," and it's been working without a hitch for a few months now. However, I still hear about it from the president of the company every once in a while, asking me when he can sit down for that interview!
In case anyone's interested, here's the finished agent:
Sub Initialize
Dim session As New NotesSession
Dim db As NotesDatabase
Dim doc As NotesDocument
Dim smtp2 As NotesDocument
Set db = session.CurrentDatabase
Set doc = New NotesDocument( db )
Set smtp2 = session.DocumentContext
Ifrom = smtp2.from(0)
If Instr(Ifrom,"@") Then
doc.Form = "Memo"
doc.INetFrom = "opportunity@domain.com"
doc.ReplyTo = "postmaster@domain.com"
doc.SendTo = smtp2.from(0)
doc.Subject = "COMPANY NAME - Resume Received"
Set body = New NotesRichTextItem(doc, "Body" )
Call body.AppendText("Thank you for your interest in pursuing employment etc.. ")
Call body.addnewline(3)
Call body.AppendText("Regards,")
Call body.addnewline(2)
Call body.AppendText("COMPANY Recruitment Team")
Call doc.Send( False )
End If
End Sub
-- Christopher Toohey
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