I have a colleague who usually does different ones for internal and external: internal will be “I’m currently in the pouring rain in a tent in the Cotswolds. I get back (hopefully without trenchfoot!) on Monday Date. Whilst I’m getting soggy please contact Email Address.” and external is just “I’m on annual leave between X and Y and will not be accessing my email. Please contact Email Address if you need assistance during this time.” We all really like their internal ones.
I have a couple people that I work with though who set them for outside their normal work hours, like they automatically kick on at 4:30pm and off at 8am or whatever, and then there’s the one special snowflake who sets her out of office not only when she leaves for the day every day, but also when she takes her half hour lunch or her fifteen minute break, Jesus wept.
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I think humor is fine (the hard-to-misunderstand kind), but definitely less than 100 words of it. “I’m out of the office returning Thursday June 10th. Please contact (shared mailbox email address) for support or call (person name) if the matter is urgent.”
IDK, I try to change my OOO if I’m out for a day. It might not be completely necessary, but I’d rather inform people, and it doesn’t happen often enough to be annoying for me.
2.) Welcome to John Doe. Due to our company holiday our service staff will be available again for you from Monday, the 4.7.2016. The shipping of the orders will start again on 01.11.2016. In the meantime you are welcome to send your request to our email [email protected] or through our contact form. Many Thanks!
If you’re off to have fun on your vacation, you might as well have some fun in your OOO message! And hey, you might inspire someone else to start planning their next holiday.
While you certainly don’t want to go on and on in your message, there is an opportunity to engage or educate while you’re away. Here are a few options to potentially include.
Christmas email signatures are one of the most popular seasonal signatures. Nothing strange here, the holiday mood starts well before actual Christmas date. And because your email signature is the beating heart of your professional correspondence, holidays are the perfect moment to refresh your email signature design.
Education Details: You can always have templates ready at hand to use for varied occasions which cater to different sets of people. These will save a lot of time as well. Sample Out-of-the-office (OOTO) Automated Responses For Email. Thank you for your message. I will be out of the office …
I’ve only seen it used for certain roles – usually admin-type ones – where people are fielding a significant amount of requests, so the potential vacation backlog could become prohibative and discourage people from taking time off.
Here’s one example out in the world, which jumpstarted me thinking about this topic:
Thanks for your email. I’m currently offline, returning on [date]. I’ll respond to your message then.
I hope this email finds you well. I’m out of the office right now but will get back to you as soon as possible. Expect a reply next Monday. For urgent matters, you can email or call [Name] at [email and phone number].
If your email client allows it, you could always just use an image to express your out-office sentiment, like this one. After all, they say that a picture is worth a thousand words — and visual content is still essential to successful marketing.
Education Details: 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. Note: For Outlook 2007, to turn off out-of-office replies, select Tools > Out of Office Assistant and uncheck the Send Out of Office auto-replies checkbox.
It’s up to you whether you want to explicitly state that you’ve been furloughed. If you’re working at a company or industry where a sizable portion of the workforce has been furloughed, it might be confusing not to say so. You might write:
In this email, you’re a UPS package getting delivered to your vacation destination. Ah, I wish UPS offered this service.