In all seriousness, you've probably ended up here because you were looking for some inspiration on your out of office message. You saw that they can range from funny to outright sales-y to a serious teaching moment. There's a few other things we want to make sure you don't leave out of your next out of office reply. Here's our three rules for scratching out that next OOO:
No one thinks much about cybersecurity while traveling. However, email security company Tessian warns the out of office message actually plays right into the hands of threat actors and cybercriminals. It’s a social engineering attack vector that no one thinks about. The out of office message is ubiquitous and handy. But if it includes any personal information at all — such as attending a funeral or going out of the country — attackers have all the information they need to impersonate the person who is out of the office, without the attacker having to do any real work.
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Click the cog and select ‘Settings’Scroll down to ‘Out of Office AutoReply’Specify a time periodWrite your out of office emailConfirm other details and press ‘Save Changes’
I once had a coworker who would put up OOOs for absolutely everything, and it irked me to an unreasonable level. Spending the afternoon working with a colleague on a project? OOO. Just returned from vacation and trying to catch up? OOO. A lot of meetings that day? OOO.
Here are some suggestions for what you should always include in your auto-reply emails when you are out of the office:
The boss’s thinking was that people who did drivebys looking for you would then email you, see your OOO, and then be able to call you to talk about whatever they were driving by for. No one liked putting their personal contact info so we never worked from home (pre-COVID and pre-VOIP implementation) or told people to IM us and we’d call them.
Yeah this sort of chain is why we got an out of office address for each department. It went to the managers who were never all off at the same time.
And although my colleague had mixed feelings about her own parents joining that population in Florida, she couldn’t be too upset when her dad suggested flying down from Boston for a Red Sox spring training game.
You can get quite creative and figure it out by yourself. However, here’s an example.
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].
Thank you for your mail, I am currently out of the office on annual leave, returning October 12th. If your inquiry is urgent, please reach out to (YOUR COLLEAGUE’SNAME);[email protected] for sales/channel-related issues or (YOUR COLLEAGUE’SNAME);[email protected] for technical related questions.
Need to set up a generic away message for times you’re away from the phone or need to refocus your attention? Simply throw this template up for a few hours to buy yourself some time. Thank you for contacting Lulu’s, you’ve reached Anne. I’m out of the office currently, but I will respond to your message by 3 pm. Thank you for your patience!
Note: If you don’t see Automatic Replies, use Rules and Alerts to set up your out-of-office message.
Like the previous examples, the message doesn’t have to be lengthy – you just need to let people know the details, and who they should be contacting in your absence.
There are multiple ways to craft your out-of-office message, but there are a couple of standard best practices to follow that will ensure you don’t come back to angry or confused customers, coworkers, or vendors.
Thank you for your email. Unfortunately, I am currently out of the office and will not return until 3rd November.
As a person who hates voicemail, I applaud this. Send me an email. Give me a paper trail.