Do you need to BCC or CC someone on certain emails that you send out? Wouldn’t it be great if Outlook could do this automatically for you, or at least prompt you to add the person to the recipients list?
In this post we will show you how can use Send Rules to do this for you. SendRules is one of the components of SendGuard for Outlook.
SendRules allows you to define your own rules to run on any outgoing emails that can be used to:
- Check emails for sensitive information (recipients, attachments, keywords etc.) and prompt the for confirmation before emails are sent out.
- Block sending of emails based on your own criteria.
- CC or BCC additional recipients based on your own criteria.
Example
Here is a Rule that I have setup in my own Outlook.
A maintenance company looks after maintenance of our office building. My contact person in the maintenance company is Ajesh, and I write to him whenever something needs to be done but… I also found it useful to CC his manager (Shivas) every time I email Ajesh.
It is easy to forget so I have setup SendRules/SendGuard to prompt me to CC Shivas every time I email Ajesh.
I only need to click Yes and the email is automatically CCed to Shivas. If I click No then the email is still sent out but without being CCed to Shivas (I don’t want to bother Shivas for small things).
NOTE: It is also easy to setup SendGuard to CC or BCC without prompting the user if you want.
Step-by-Step
(You will need to have SendGuard for Outlook installed in order to carry out the following. A fully function trial can be downloaded from here.)
Open up the SendGuard Settings screen (Click on the Standss Outlook Addins tab on the ribbon, click on the little drop-down arrow and then click Settings).
Click the Add button to create a new Rule.
Give the Rule a name (to distinguish it from other Rules).
A Rule contains two parts: an IF part which is the set of CONDTIONS to check the email for, and a THEN part which is the ACTION to take if the conditions are met.
Set the IF condition. In this case, my IF condition is “if the email contains Ajesh’es email address). The If tab has a lot of other conditions that you can check for.
Click on the Then tab.
Tick the Show Message box and select the Warning with Yes/No buttons message type (If you don’t want to be prompted, then leave this box unticked).
Enter your message details in the Message Caption and Message Body fields on the screen (You can right click over the Message Body field to enter in tags for the email addresses etc).
Tick the CC to box under the Action on Yes/OK and enter the appropriate email address in the box. This means that if the user clicks Yes then the email will be CCed to the entered email address.
Untick the box Do not send email for Action on No/Cancel. If the box is ticked then the email will NOT be sent out when the user clicks No. In this case I still want the email to be sent out if the user clicks No (but I do not want the CC to be added to the email).
Click OK to save your new Rule and go back to the main Settings screen.
Make sure that your new Rule is ticked in the list of Rules, and then click OK to save and close the Settings screen.
That’s it. Now anytime I send out an email to Ajesh, I get asked if I should CC it to Shivas. Easy.
Trying it out for yourself
SendRules and the rest of SendGuard can be setup easily to carry out all kinds of checks and actions on outgoing emails.
I have another similar rule setup to ask me if I want to add outgoing emails to my CRM system (by BCCing a special email address that they have given me).
Other customers use it to check emails for specific words and recipients.
You can download a fully functional trial version and test it for yourself from here.
