I agree that the reasons are not relevant. But at my last company, a coworker had overly short out of office messages. Examples: “out of office today.” Or “out of office until Monday.” With no additional information about coverage, etc. Those always felt overly curt to me and made me wonder, is this person okay? Was this OOO planned or are they on the verge of a mental breakdown? (It was a very toxic culture so this wasn’t out of the question). I would be curious to hear others perspectives on this. Is too little information just as bad?
Remember to change the dates, and double-check to make sure they’re correct if you’re resuming the same message you used the last time.
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Thanks so much for your note! I’ve packed away my makeshift office for the week in order to go nowhere and do nothing. I may be dipping my toes in the tub instead of the ocean and making my favorite Smitten Kitchen recipes for myself rather than indulging at a fancy restaurant, but I’m still trying to disconnect and recharge.
Previously, in our Vtiger Application Platform (VTAP) blog series, we discussed how to customize the Vtiger interface and bring in custom buttons and widgets to ...
What Should Your Vacation Message Include?A subject, with the dates you leave and returnWho to contact in an emergency (name, email, and phone number)Point of contact for non-urgent inquiries (name, email, and phone number)Keep Your Message Professional
But really, I think people who know you WFH will get your meaning and people who don’t know you WFH won’t care or feel misled if they find out you really work from home.
It’s very likely that you’ll set up an auto-reply message while you’re at a conference or any other business event. What’s more, some of your prospects will be there as well, so you should use an opportunity like that to meet them in person and strengthen that relationship.
I like funny OOO – but I am a bad offender regarding these and may slightly overshare. I recently had to be in and out for eye surgery and this was mine:
But what should you do to keep the message informative, engaged and maybe a little festive?
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I do that for most cases. Occasionally I’ll change it to “I’m out of the country and will not have phone or email access.”
There is never a time that isn’t right to share the love. Do well to share these messages with friends and loved ones.
Hoo boy, have I got some PTSD from Old Job about out of office autoreplies. Exboss was such a stickler for them and actually enforced her expectations as official policy. Meaning if you didn’t do it to her exact specs, she’d call you back to the office to do it (which no one did) and read you the riot act afterwards while threatening to write you up for insubordination. She demanded them any time that we were away from our desk for longer than 30 minutes and for anything other than a meeting. So training in the conference room down the hall, a work lunch with teammates, leaving an hour early for an appointment, arriving late for an appointment, even working from home, all required OOO alerts.
When Outlook is set up to send automatic replies, you’ll see a message under the ribbon with this information. Select Turn off to disable automatic out-of-office replies. If you want to modify the dates for your automatic reply or the message sent, use the steps above to modify your settings.
My favorite OOO to set is something like this: “I’m at sea from X to Y with very limited bandwidth. I’ll reply to urgent emails as soon as possible (but there may be a delay); if you don’t hear back from me by Z, please resend you message.”
Thank you for your email. I’m currently offline until [date] to celebrate the holiday with my loved ones—without my phone in front of my face.
When you share transparent business information and provide alternative ways when the relevant channel is not available, it delivers a delightful service experience.