The reply letter will become an Outlook template. Note that in order to make something an Outlook template, you must not write it using Word as your editor (see http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA010917681033.aspx for details).

Once I wrote the letter, I saved it as a template by selecting Save As from the File menu and making the Save as type "Outlook Template", as shown in Figure B.

FIGURE B

Save as an Outlook Template. Click picture for a larger image.

Make a list of editors
As you get used to building rules, you'll learn how to predict what you're going to need. For example, I know that these Answer Team submissions are likely to generate conversations among me and my editors, so when I forward a submission to an editor, I'm likely to get a reply. When I do, I'm not going to want to again trigger this rule, so I'm going to need to build in some exceptions.

One such exception is I want to make sure that if I do get an email from one of my editors, the rule isn't triggered. This means I needed to know the email addresses for my editors. I like to keep track of groups of people I correspond with, and one such group is the OutlookPower editors. Therefore, I created a distribution list containing the names and addresses of each editor, as shown in Figure C.

FIGURE C

Here's the list of OutlookPower's editors. Click picture for a larger image.

Because each editor also tends to get a massive amount of email, each of them has a public email address which is OK to publish and a private one, which is never published. Because I'm sending mail to their private addresses, I've blurred them out in the figure above.

By the way, to create a distribution list, select Distribution List from the New button's drop-down menu.

Make a contact entry for the person you're forwarding to
It's important to make sure I've got a Contact entry for Francine, since I'll be forwarding all the email entries to her as they come in. You can see her contact entry in Figure D.

FIGURE D

Make sure there's a contact entry for your forward recipient. Click picture for a larger image.

Create the storage folder
There's one last step that's needed. I want to keep a copy of each request message, and I want to make sure those copies are not stored in my inbox. So I've gone ahead and created an "OutlookPower Answer Team submissions" folder. Again, you want to make sure you do this before you start building your rule.

That completes the preparation work. Now it's time to build the rule.

Building the rule
If you've never looked at Outlook's rules engine, you're going to be pleasantly surprised by how much it can do. To access the rules engine, Select Rules and Alerts from the Tools menu. To create a new rule, click the creatively titled New Rule button.

Outlook tries to make things easier by giving you some pre-built rules, but I like to start from a blank rule, as shown in Figure E.

FIGURE E

Starting from a blank rule keeps things clean and organized. Click picture for a larger image.

The incoming condition that triggers the rule
Rules are executed when a certain condition is met. In this case, I want to trigger the rule when the subject contains "OUTLOOKPOWER ANSWER TEAM". So, as Figure F shows, I checked off that condition and made the specific words "OUTLOOKPOWER ANSWER TEAM".