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Setting reply-to for student emails

Setting reply-to for student emails

by James Schatzman -
Number of replies: 6
How does one configure the "reply-to" email address for an installed Webwork2 system? I vaguely recall that this was one of the setup questions during install, but I don't find any way to set it after the fact. I have found some comments in the forums, that

1) There might be a default reply-to configured into Perl.

2) There is a webworkCourse.ph file that contains a default email address.

Neither comment seems to be helpful.

Searching my entire Webwork2 installation and the course files, I find the SendMail.pl script which uses reply-to, but I am not finding where this is set. Is it in the database?

Thanks!

In reply to James Schatzman

Re: Setting reply-to for student emails

by Arnold Pizer -
Hi James,

I'm not sure what email you are referring to. SendMail.pm generates (via the "Email" link on the left side "MAIN MENU") emails which are sent to a subset of classlist optionally with mail merge data.  The "reply-to" is usually taken from the form data (or from a saved file). If that isn't available, a default value generated by the sub rfc822_mailbox from /opt/webwork/webwork2/lib/WeBWorK/DB/Record/User.pm is used. It looks like Feedback.pm also uses rfc822_mailbox.

Hope this helps a bit,

Arnie
In reply to Arnold Pizer

Re: Setting reply-to for student emails

by James Schatzman -
The emails I refer to are the ones sent by webwork, on behalf of a student, when they click on the "Email instructor" button at the bottom of each problem.

The annoyance I have at the moment is that the email is sent with "reply-to" set to my email address, instead of being set to the student's email address, which is what I would refer. As a consequence, I have to manually edit the "send-to" address when I reply to an "email instructor" message.

Thanks!

In reply to James Schatzman

Re: Setting reply-to for student emails

by Arnold Pizer -
Hi,

This is strange.  It's most easy for me to test on WeBWorK 2.10 and there, if the student sending the email has an email address in the classlist, the email is "from" that email address and "reply" replies to that email address.  If this isn't the behavior most people are seeing, I think we would be seeing many complaints and this is the first one I have seen.

Arnie 
In reply to James Schatzman

Re: Setting reply-to for student emails

by Andrew Ruether -
Sorry to revive an old thread, but I'm running into this same issue using WeBWorK version 2.12 with the LTI connector to generate student accounts.  The emails generated from WeBWorK coming from students to the instructor have a reply-to of webwork@swarthmore.edu instead of the student's actual email address.  I can't figure out where this could be set.  It is frustrating for the faculty because they have to remember to change the email address before replying.

The students have valid emails in WeBWorK.  Did you have any thoughts on how to fix the problem?

Thanks,

- Andrew
In reply to Andrew Ruether

Re: Setting reply-to for student emails

by Andrew Bayliss -
I am having the same behavior ever since I upgraded ubuntu to 16.04 and webwork to 2.12 this summer.
In reply to Andrew Bayliss

Re: Setting reply-to for student emails

by James Schatzman -
It seems odd to me that no one in the Webwork community knows how to fix this problem. During the initial setup process, the Webwork installer asks if you want it to set the "reply-to" field in students' "email instructor" emails. If you haplessly say yes, then the resulting emails are useless, because the "reply-to" field is set to some constant email address (like yours, the instructors).