FIGURE F

Trigger the rule when "OUTLOOKPOWER ANSWER TEAM" is in the subject. Click picture for a larger image.

This is actually too broad a condition, so later, I'll create some exceptions to help manage this rule. Keep reading.

What to do with the message
Once the rule's been triggered, I want to take a number of actions. The first action I want to take is to move it to the Answer Team submissions folder, as shown in Figure G.

FIGURE G

The message will be moved to its own folder. Click picture for a larger image.

This is the first time my prep work has come into play in this rule. Once I check "Move it to the specified folder", Outlook will want to know what folder. Since I already created one earlier, I simply selected it.

Now that I've moved the incoming message to a storage folder, I want to reply with the template I created earlier. I checked "Reply using a specific template" then clicked the underlined "A specific template" in the step 2 box, as shown in Figure H.

FIGURE H

Reply with the template created earlier. Click picture for a larger image.

There's a trick here, though.

When I clicked "A specific template", the selection box in Outlook popped up and the template I'd created earlier wasn't there! It turns out you need to tell the dialog to look in "User Templates in File System", a selection from the Look in drop-down menu.

Now that my template was visible, I selected it, and it was time to move on to the next action, forwarding it to Fran, as you can see in Figure I.

FIGURE I

Forward the request on to Fran. Click picture for a larger image.

It might seem like I'm done, since everything I said I wanted to do has been done. I've saved the message, sent a reply, and forwarded it off to Fran. But there's more to it than that. I clicked next, and Outlook moved on to the exceptions screen.

Managing exceptions
Rules are very powerful, but some people report having problems with them. That's because rules, like any other programming system, do pretty much exactly what you tell them. You need to think through the various possibilities, and then build in the options to make them work better.

For example, it might seem like every time I get a message with "OUTLOOKPOWER ANSWER TEAM" in the subject, I'll want to trigger the rule. But this is far from true. In reality, it's only when I get such a message from a reader, and then, only when that reader first sends it in.

Think about it. Once the message comes in, I'm forwarding it to Fran. She may reply with some questions or comments. She's going to send it back to me with the written article, or send it to Senior Editor James Booth for final editing. He might reply to me about it. We might not be sure, at the outset, what the right answer is, and we might forward it on to another editor or for further discussion. For each of these stages in the conversation, we definitely do not want to trigger the rule.

Also, it's possible that I'll send an email to the reader who submitted the rule. Again, I might get a response, and I don't want to trigger the rule.

Generalizing, I don't want to trigger the rule if the trigger subject comes in from an OutlookPower editor, and I don't want to trigger the rule if it's a reply or forwarded message. Here's how I fixed that.