These holidays will allow us all to enjoy the great season and have some amazing time with family and friends. This email is to inform you [all] that the office will be closed for [ X] days from [ DATE] to [ DATE] due to the coming festive season. Our premises will remain closed for normal business from [start date] up to and including [last date].
I’ll be back in front of my computer on [date] and will respond to your message at that time. If you need immediate assistance, please send an email to [contact name] at [contact email]. For Those Who Intend to Chill in a Galaxy Far Far Away (Where There Is No Internet)
.
Auto Attendants easily route your calls and can be set with a holiday-specific greeting. You can choose to select a schedule adjusted for holiday hours or carry over the rules set for regular business hours.
Which to my mind lets people know when I’m back and that I will get back to them after that date, as well as who to contact for more urgent stuff. But every time, Wakeen gets teapot questions because people apparently can’t be bothered to finish reading and they both get questions on stuff that is not due for weeks after I return.
I have literally never seen an OOO that wasn’t “I will be out of the office until DATE/further notice. Please contact X or Y at EMAIL/PHONE if you need assistance.” This is fascinating stuff.
If you are traveling for a work-related conference or business trip and have limited access to email, let people know in the body of the message. This shows that you are active in industry circles and that you’re dedicated to learning and serious about your professional development. This will win major credibility points in the eyes of your email inquirers.
So here's a breakdown for how to write the perfect, most concise out-of-office message.
Of course, every message sends a message, even a barebones OOO that seems to say nothing more than that you’re away until next week, so why not try to inject a little personality? You could get quirky by giving your auto-responder robot a personality. You could dispense with words altogether and substitute a gif or emojis. Or how about a little retro concrete poetry – you know, where you arrange your words on the screen to form an image of a palm tree or a pina colada? It might be worth noting here that the amount of personality you inject depends on your trade. What earns you cachet in the creative industries might backfire in the financial sector, for instance.
Sample voicemail message for office or department: “Thank you for calling The University of Toledo’s (office/department). The University is closed for winter break. Please call back after New Year’s Day or visit our website at (website URL). Thank you and happy holidays.”
These messages are generally formal in nature and have the information about the unavailability of an individual and also the details of the person who can be contacted in his/her absence.
I found the video funny and would actually laugh at the sense of humor in that out of office message.
The holiday out of office best wishes are sent to the offices when the staff of the office remains out of office for the holidays. The wishes are sent to the office marked to the staff to make them feel good. The wishes can be sent through mails and text messages to the office mails and numbers.
The other being I did it once at my current job, pointed them to my boss, and he called me every time someone reached out to him. It was SUPER annoying, because not a single thing was time sensitive or really even remotely important, and if I hadn’t given a contact person they would have just waited. But I’m really the only person that does that I do, so when I’m gone, they just have to wait. :shrug:
While not QUITE as annoying as “Have a great day!” there are several people/departments who use an auto reply for the most frequently asked questions or information for their department…something along the line of an IT auto response that says: “To submit an IT request or check for an updated status on a request, please visit request.business.com”
That said, I promised my wife that I am going to try to disconnect, get away and enjoy our vacation as much as possible. So, I’m going to experiment with something new. I’m going to leave the decision in your hands:
In Outlook Mail, you can set an auto-reply or "vacation message" on your account. This will automatically send a message back to anyone who emails you to let them know that you are on vacation, out of the office, or otherwise unable to respond.
The only thing I add to that boilerplate is if I’m working but mostly unavailable.