Administering someone else's Out Of Office reply

Finally, I have the answer to something that's bugged me for a very long time - how to adjust a user's Exchange-based out of office reply.

Normally, the only way to do this is to log in as the user either to their Outlook, or to OWA, then adjust their OOF settings via Tools, Out of Office Assistant. Since this requires that you know the user's password, it is not always a convenient method.

I thought that there might be some way to change things via the server, perhaps via PFDAVAdmin. None that I could find, sadly, existed.

So here's a kludge that gets you the result you want:

1. In ESM, use the Manage Full Permissions option on the user's Mailbox to give yourself full permissions on the user's account.
2. On your Windows machine, go to Control Panel, Mail, Profiles.
3. Add the user's name - when you fill in the New Account form, leave the password section blank and click Next. Because you have full permissions, you don't need a password.
4. Radio on "Ask for Profile"
   
5. Open Outlook, and choose the user's profile.
6. Fill out their OOF.
7. Quit Outlook, remove their profile from the Mail Control Panel applet.
8. On the server, remove your full permissions from their account.

A kludge because it's too easy to forget the very final step, leaving a security hole.

But it works!