A well-deserved holiday deserves a substantial out-of-office message that really hammers home the fact that they’re still working, while you’re off on your travels – nice and descriptive to really paint the picture!
Plus the world of technology has moved on from answering machines (which is all voice mail is) so… nice vintage projector you got there
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Thank you for your email. I am out of the office for maternity leave until ( the date you expect to return from maternity leave).
Dear Customer, Thank you for your email Inquiry, Our office closed is closed celebrating [HOLIDAY]. We will not be able to respond to your email until [date]. Apologize for the delay. We wish you a wonderful holiday season. Best regards.
Happy Holidays, I hope this email finds you well. I am taking advantage of the holiday season to get some much-needed time with family and friends. I will not be able to respond to any work-related emails until after Jan. 4, 2020. If you have a time …
In the excitement of office parties and the long-awaited holiday break, don’t leave your office closure preparations till the last minute. Here is a holiday checklist you can share across your organisation to tick off the year and the office:
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.
It’s great to hear from you. I’m currently out of the office until mm/dd with limited/ no access to my email. Anyway, feel free to contact [email] in case your request is urgent.
PS: We love our downtime and here at HAR, we're big believers everyone needs a vacay from work. Yes, even you—the social media junkies, the workaholics, the entrepreneurial diehards who accidentally (or "accidentally") take their smartphone into the shower.
If people know you are on vacation or maternity leave, for instance, they are more likely to wait for your return to follow up. If you are at a work conference, however, they might still expect you to check your email or provide updates.
I am not able to set OOO messages at all. Most of the people who are contacting me do so through custom aliases that then come to our team, who each handles specifics. Even if I’m out someone else is available, but I can’t know who is supposed to handle that specific email to be able to redirect without naming everyone, and then confusing things more when Client A gets the same reply as Client B but one needs to go to teammate C and the other to teammates D & E. Then to make just that bit more complicated, there are the clients who think that going around the system to email the teammates directly at our personal email addresses is better but pitch a hissy when we’re OOO but they didn’t get a notice? I just set rules to forward those.
Oh shoot. You need something and I’m unavailable today. Here’s the good news: you have options.
Not an OOO issue but the comment about PTSD from OldJob reminded me of this. I am a recreational sailor who often made longer offshore trips as my vacation. OldBoss INSISTED that we provide contact instructions. Mine was some variant of “Dial O and ask for the Marine Operator. Give them [name of boat], [call sign] and [approximate location by date] along with your name and credit card number. We will be monitoring Channel 16 at these times…..” Never got a call. Word spread and there was a sudden epidemic of sailing vacations in my office!
Out of office messages can be as concise or detailed as you need but should follow a standard structure. Here are two templates you can use to create your own message.
There is no built-in auto reply-feature in iOS to set out off office message for iPhone to auto-reply for text and calls. Auto-reply on Text message on iPhone is an essential feature that is useful when you go for a vacation or out of station for a while. However, there is a workaround to set auto-reply text messages on the iPhone for calls and texts. This will work all the time and send iMessage auto-reply for incoming calls and text messages to your iPhone.
haha no offense taken. No one wanted to read (or even listen!) to all that. We only did it so she’d stop ruining our Mondays with epic 1-hour rants about what terrible people we are. And no, none of the projects we worked on were ever so critical or time-sensitive!
If you're anything like I am, you probably fall into team two. That doesn't leave a lot of time to get creative. But if you plan ahead, you might be able to craft some hilarity.