Honest communication, even in the form of an email auto reply, is a roadmap. It helps people understand how best to help you and, in turn, allows them to better help themselves. Straightforward expectation setting is a way to be respectful of your coworkers’ time and pressures, but most importantly, it’s a way to be respectful of and guard your time. Even if you don’t feel an intense need to be more open in your workplace correspondence, consider modeling the behavior for others who work with you or, especially, those who work for you. It’s a small change in behavior but it’s a meaningful one. And this summer is the perfect time to start.
It's a tip that Kate Leaver, Australian author of the newly published book The Friendship Cure: A Manifesto for Reconnecting in the Modern World, has long championed. “I usually just describe the most delicious thing I'll be eating while I'm away. I've been told it makes people very jealous, in a happy-for-me sort of way,” she says. A typical auto-response from her reads: “OOO: Busy eating my body weight in gelato. Gleefully, wifi isn’t great on windswept Italian beaches so I will likely not see your email for days.”

Admittedly the several people I know who do this are also very lazy so I may be reading into tone? Because it definitely was going to be whenever it was going to be convenient for them, not so much for the business.
I give my folks scripts because, otherwise, I end up with long winding OOOs that talk about why they’re out but not what the writer/caller should do to get help (staff is 1/3 entry-level with varying degrees of professional office familiarity). I do not have the time to micromanage to this level, though – if I see an off-spec OOO, I send the how-to guide and remind them that they need to tell people who to call while they’re out or to mention the specific dates, but most of them have good judgment enough not to be totally inappropriate to the point I need IT to intervene.