According to The Washington Post’s self-reported survey of more than 1,000 white-collar workers, “we spend an average of 4.1 hours checking our work email each day.” That’s over 1,000 hours each year. The holidays are the perfect time to temporarily break up with your email inbox for a digital detox. Before you stress about crafting the perfect out of the office message, check out our sample templates. From professionally festive to holiday humor, we know you’ll be ready to copy, paste, and fully embrace the holiday season.
Calls/SMS Auto Reply app lets you add customized out of office messages that it sends automatically in response to missed calls and texts so that your clients or co-workers know what they can expect. A prompt auto-response is a great way to save relationships and trust and retain customers. You can use these messages to tell them when you will respond and what they should do in case they need urgent assistance.
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I will be out of the office until *date*. My colleague *Name* will be happy to assist you.
You’re finally taking some time off of work. Sure, your holidays this year won’t be spent sunning in the tropics or scaling an ice-capped mountain as you might have hoped, but you’ve got big plans for taking some down time to rest, relax, and binge new shows on your favorite streaming service.
I don’t think it’s condescending, but I do find it annoying. I have a coworker who sometimes writes emails in this tone of voice, and it’s honestly way too much.
(Depending on your email host, the process of setting up your out of office assistant may vary. You can find a guide on how to access your out of office settings in Outlook here.)
Huh. This is a rare column from you that I disagree with almost entirely. I guess to start with what I think you get right, there's no need to apologize for being out of office, and no one should feel obligated to deal with anything other than a legitimate emergency (which are, in most fields, truly rare) while on vacation or while taking time off.
With emojis looking different on nearly every operating system and brand of smartphone, this is a bold choice which could leave your emailers confused. Are you crying with laughter or wailing with existential dread? Hard to tell.
But I’ve also seen this tactic used for a week’s vacation, which seems… aggressive.
Anybody that might need me that quickly should have access to my calendar and can see I’m in a meeting. Anybody that can’t see my calendar shouldn’t expect a reply in an hour unless I’d said I’d be available or something.
It’s my favorite time of year, which means I’m currently out of the office lounging on a Carribean beach, sipping on mojitos, and attempting to achieve the tan I’ve been waiting all year long for.
Of course, managing a minute and a half response time isn’t so easily accomplished when you’re out of office, receiving hundreds of texts each hour, or shifting your attention to a different project.
She continues: “However, there should be a way for whoever is emailing you to have an urgent request handled, and that should be included as part of your OOO as well as being known to your work team (supervisor and colleagues). That might look like including a coworker's email on your OOO or it might simply involve setting a forwarding rule for while you're away, so that your email goes to the colleague who's covering.”
The auto reply only allows you to choose between ‘No-one, Recents, Favourite, All Contacts’. I need it to reply to everyone. Is there a way of doing this?
I hope you will be celebrating the season soon. However, if your email is time-sensitive, please contact [Alternate Name] at [alternate email] and one of our busy elves will be happy to help.
“The purpose isn’t to let people know you’re out of the office, it’s to let them know you're not going to be responding,” says Muse career coach Benjamin Ritter, founder of Live for Yourself Consulting. It’s not about where you are physically, but rather whether or not you’ll see someone’s email and be available to react to it within a typical timeframe (which could differ depending on your role, company, and industry).
How about a little retro concrete poetry – you know, where you arrange your words on the screen to form an image of a palm tree or a pina colada?