Network Working Group T. Showalter Internet Draft: Sieve Vacation Carnegie Mellon Document: draft-showalter-sieve-vacation-00.txt January 1998 Expire in six months (31 Jun 1998) Sieve -- Vacation Extension Status of this memo This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as ``work in progress.'' To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check the ``1id-abstracts.txt'' listing contained in the Internet-Drafts Shadow Directories on ftp.is.co.za (Africa), ftp.nordu.net (Europe), munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim), ds.internic.net (US East Coast), or ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast). The protocol discussed in this document is experimental and subject to change. Persons planning on either implementing or using this protocol are STRONGLY URGED to get in touch with the author before embarking on such a project. Copyright Copyright (C) The Internet Society 1998. All Rights Reserved. Abstract This document describes an extension to the Sieve mail filtering language for an autoresponder similar to that of the Unix ''vacation'' command. The extension is offered in the hopes of making frequently used commands availible (and discouraging users from implementing it themselves). Showalter Expires 31-Jun-1998 [Page 1] Internet DRAFT Sieve -- Vacation January 1998 0. Meta-information on this draft This information is intended to facilitate discussion. It will be removed when this document leaves the Internet-Draft stage. 0.1. Discussion This draft is intended to be compared with the Sieve mail filtering language, an Internet-Draft being discussed on the MTA Filters mailing list at . Subscription requests can be sent to (send an email message with the word "subscribe" in the body). More information on the mailing list along with a WWW archive of back messages is available at . 1. Introduction This is an extension to the Sieve language defined by [SIEVE] for notification that messages will not be immediately answered. Conventions for notations are as in [SIEVE] section 1.1, including use of [KEYWORDS]. 2. Capability Identifier Sieve implementations that implement vacation have an identifier of "VACATION" for use with the capability mechanism. 3. Vacation Action Syntax: vacation The "vacation" action implements a vacation autoresponder similar to the vacation command availible under many versions of Unix. Its purpose is to provide correspondants with notification that the user is away for an extended period of time and that they should not expect quick responses. Vacation is similar to reply as defined in [SIEVE]. Like reply in that document and Unix vacation, the reply goes to the address specified by the return-path header (the envelope "MAIL FROM" address), not to the addresses in the From header. There are a few differences: "Vacation" keeps track of all of the addresses that it has responded to in the past seven (7) days and MUST NOT respond to them a second Showalter Expires 31-Jun-1998 [Page 4] Internet DRAFT Sieve -- Vacation January 1998 time within this period. The "vacation" action may send out notifications less frequently, but should not send them out more frequently. Vacation is used like this: Example: if header ("to", "cc") contains ("tjs@andrew.cmu.edu") { vacation "I'm away until Octber 19. If it's an emergency, call 911, I guess." ; } By mingling vacation with other rules, users can do something more selective. Example: if header "from" contains "boss@frobnitzm.edu" { forward "pleeb@xanadu.wv.us"; } else { if header ("to", "cc") contains ("tjs@andrew.cmu.edu") { vacation "Sorry, I'm away, I'll read your message when I get around to it."; } However, it is important that users check for their email address in the To and CC lines of the input message so that the script only responds to mail sent to them. 4. Interaction with Other Sieve Actions Sieve actions sometimes prohibit each other in order to make filtering scripts less likely to cause serious problems. Vacation has exactly the same semantics as reply, as it is strictly less likely to cause problems -- vacation sometimes sends out a message, whereas reply always does. 5. Security Considerations It is important that implementations correctly implement the seven- day limit on messages and reply to the envelope from address, not the From line address. Showalter Expires 31-Jun-1998 [Page 5] Internet DRAFT Sieve -- Vacation January 1998 6. Formal Grammar The grammar used in this section is the same as the ABNF described in [ABNF]. action =/ vacation ;; "vacation" is now a legal action vacation = vacation WSP string 7. Author's Address Tim Showalter Carnegie Mellon University 5000 Forbes Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15213 E-Mail: tjs@andrew.cmu.edu Showalter Expires 31-Jun-1998 [Page 6] Internet DRAFT Sieve -- Vacation January 1998 Appendices Appendix A. References [ABNF] Crocker, D., "Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF", Internet Mail Consortium, RFC 2234, November, 1997. [KEYWORDS] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", RFC 2119, Harvard University, March 1997. [SIEVE] Showalter, T., "Sieve: A Mail Filtering Language", Carenegie Mellon, Work in Progress. Appendix B. Full Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The Internet Society 1997. All Rights Reserved. This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than English. The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns. This document will expire before June 31, 1998. Showalter Expires 31-Jun-1998 [Page 7]