An away message will generally be a 160-character auto-reply message that can be turned on or off as needed.
No matter what your message says, just make sure you have one – it’s the polite and professional thing to so. To help you get started, we’ve put together some examples you can test, tweak, use, and share with colleagues.
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If it’s not that infinite loop of autoreply hell, you get the “I will not be reading or responding to any email sent during this time. Please resend your request after August 1st.” dismissal.
The ability to schedule your OOO replies was literally the best feature ever to come to Outlook, and it took way too long.
There are some places where the culture absolutely embraces this type of…expression so it may be that it works just fine.
If you’re interested in our [product/service]. Great! Read what our customers are saying about how awesome their experience has been – https://www.g2.com/products/nethunt-crm/reviews
Thanks for your email. I’m currently out of office until mm/dd/yyyy. If you need help, email my colleague at [email protected].
“some things are MORE important than work” definitely comes off as aggressive to me. “How DARE you email me when I’m doing something MORE IMPORTANT, and for that matter why aren’t YOU spending time with YOUR family?!”
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I think simple is best, and also safest. I found the message in the post amusing as an AAM article, but if I had contacted this person on a serious and/or urgent work matter I would probably be annoyed by the comedy skit. And I was contacting them because they had messed up somehow, it would land very badly.
If you centre-align that it resembles a Christmas tree, and I coloured the font accordingly :D
It doesn’t say you have to grovel to get what you need. It says you have to ask again when they are in the office to get what you need, which is perfectly reasonable.
I think important context here is that no matter what the details added were, it always had this aggressive tone of “I’m taking a break and breaks are IMPORTANT”. Which I agree with, but it felt like it was almost aggressive/accusatory, and more importantly: this person was without a doubt the meanest, cruelest, least understanding and empathetic person I’ve ever worked with who ran her staff into the ground with urgent demands and expectations.
Hello, We are currently closed for the holiday. If it’s something urgent you can email [name] at [email]. Kind regards. [Name/signature]
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Exactly. It doesn’t matter if I’m sitting on the beach, on my couch, or in a hospital bed–I’m not reachable and you’re gonna have to wait until I get back or contact someone else.
Oh my gosh, this is funny! It does sound kinda like, “some things are more important than work, JAN.”