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Mail Filtering Rules 44
Rule order, editing and examples
when printing messages that have attachments – it is usually best to do an Attribute rule check
before printing to suppress printing of such messages.
Logical AND, Skip next rule, Goto a label, Call a label The Logical AND action allows you
to connect a groups of rules so that they must all trigger before the action in the final rule will
be taken. This, and the other rule actions shown here constitute part of flow control, or con-
trolling the order in which rules are processed. See below for more information on flow con-
trol.
Selecting many of the actions will cause Mercury to prompt you for extra information —
Move and Copy, for instance, require you to select a folder, while Forward requires you to
enter the address to which the message should be forwarded. Any extra information you have
provided will appear in the grey area beneath the Action to take field on the window. You can
change the parameter for the current rule without reselecting the action by clicking the Set
button.
Inserting text fragments (disclaimers)
One very commonly-requested feature is the ability to insert text into a message. Many or-
ganizations need to add disclaimer strings to messages sent to the outside world for legal rea-
sons, and many people who use rules for automation may wish to insert text into a message
indicating why something has happened. To do this in Mercury, create a rule for which the
action is Insert text fragment.
The process of inserting text into a message is actually very complicated, but Mercury is quite
smart about it and can handle all the most common cases. When you create a rule with the
Inserts text fragment action, you provide the rule with the name of a text file containing the
text it should add. If you wish, you can create a second file in the same location and with the
same name, but with the extension .HTM, containing simple HTML text that Mercury should
insert into HTML documents. Mercury will insert the text version of the file into plain text
message parts, and the HTML version into HTML parts (it is inserted immediately before the
</HTML> tag at the end of the message). If you do not provide an HTML version of the text,
Mercury will insert the text version in a <BLOCKQUOTE> section of the message, which is
Inserted HTML fragments probably adequate for most situations. Note that if you provide an HTML part, it can include
can contain most HTML
formatting except for most HTML formatting except for graphics.
graphics.
Rule order, editing and examples
The sequence of rules in the rule list is extremely important, since they are applied in the or-
Rules are always proc-
essed in the order they ap- der they appear in the list (remember that rule processing stops as soon as the message is de-
pear, and stop when the leted or moved to another user). To change the ordering of the rule list, highlight the rule you
message is deleted or re-
directed to another user. want to shift then click on the up or down buttons at the foot of the dialog.
You can edit an existing rule in the rule list by highlighting it and clicking the Edit rule button,
or by double-clicking it. Editing a rule is the same general process as creating one. You can
delete a rule from the rule list by highlighting it and clicking the Delete button. Finally, to
save the changes you have made to your rule list, click the OK button; if you want to discard
your changes, press Cancel instead.
Using rules – an example: To create rules which would allow people to subscribe and un-
subscribe to one of your mailing lists using the subject field instead of mail server commands
in the message body, you might set up rules that look like this:
If subject is Subscribe then Add sender to list