Many organizations prefer to have auto-replies, bounce, and out-of-office emails update cases so that internal users are aware of the delivery status of outbound emails. To ensure auto-reply and out-of-office emails update existing cases rather than creating new ones, make sure the subject (which includes the Case Thread ID) is quoted in the auto-reply. While you have little control over how external users configure their auto-replies, you may have control over internal users.

The standard Outlook/Exchange Out of Office Assistance does this automatically, but results may vary if the Outlook Rules Wizard is used. In Gmail, be sure to leave the Subject field blank in the "Vacation responder" configuration. Contact your mail server administrator for assistance with this.

Email to Case Premium has a setting called 'Blocked Email List', which can be populated with a list of email addresses and domains. If emails are received from those, they are automatically black-holed and the creation and update of cases are prevented.

Your mail server might also be able to block unwanted emails. You may be able to filter on the contents of the subject, or on certain headers. For example, X-Autoreply: yes or Auto-Submitted: auto-replied might be present in the headers, but it varies from mail server to mail server.

Alternatively, you may be able to use a workflow rule or apex trigger that performs an action based on the content of the Email Message object.

Note: The information in this article is as-is and not supported under Vicasso's App Support, with exception of issues related to the 'Blocked Email List' setting in E2CP.