Detect automated messages - Cerb

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1. One of the most common bot behaviors in Cerb is sending an automatic reply back to the sender of a new message. This is a good practice, because it confirms your receipt of a client's message, and it lets them know what to expect in terms of your support hours, SLA obligations, etc. “However, on occasion, a new message that you just received is itself an automatic reply from somewhere else.” RFC-38341 recommends that all automated responses contain a header like Auto-Submitted: auto-replied so they can be easily identified, and you should include that header in any automated messages that your bots send.

   In Automated reply filtering

2. RFC-38341 recommends that all automated responses contain a header like Auto-Submitted: auto-replied so they can be easily identified, and you should include that header in any automated messages that your bots send. “You can also check the Auto-Submitted: header on incoming mail to identify automated messages, but different mail senders also indicate this in other ways.” In this example, we'll create a reusable bot behavior that can check the most common headers on a message to see if it was sent automatically. If so, we can skip sending our own automatic response to it. For completeness, we'll also add checks for subjects that mention terms like "Out of office".

   In Automated reply filtering

3. However, on occasion, a new message that you just received is itself an automatic reply from somewhere else. You should avoid sending an automatic reply back to it. At best, it's pointless and won't be read by a human. At worst, two misbehaving bots can endlessly send auto-replies back and forth to each other, creating a mail loop. “RFC-38341 recommends that all automated responses contain a header like Auto-Submitted: auto-replied so they can be easily identified, and you should include that header in any automated messages that your bots send.” You can also check the Auto-Submitted: header on incoming mail to identify automated messages, but different mail senders also indicate this in other ways.

   In Automated reply filtering

4. One of the most common bot behaviors in Cerb is sending an automatic reply back to the sender of a new message. This is a good practice, because it confirms your receipt of a client's message, and it lets them know what to expect in terms of your support hours, SLA obligations, etc. “At worst, two misbehaving bots can endlessly send auto-replies back and forth to each other, creating a mail loop.” RFC-38341 recommends that all automated responses contain a header like Auto-Submitted: auto-replied so they can be easily identified, and you should include that header in any automated messages that your bots send.

   In Automated reply filtering

5. If none of the positive outcomes match, the "No" outcome is selected as a default, and the false() subroutine runs. “For instance, there are two additional checks that look at the subject line for situations like "Out of office" messages.” Both of these subroutines set a result placeholder to either true or false. This is what we'll check when we use the behavior from somewhere else.

   In Out-of-office reply handling

6. Click the Behaviors button and select a behavior that sends auto-replies. “Somewhere in that behavior you should add a decision to ignore automated messages.” Add a Behavior run action to check the current Message:

   In Reply handling