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Why set an out-of-office message in Gmail
Whether an employee goes on a well-deserved vacation, sabbatical, unexpected sick leave, or leaves the company altogether, setting an out-of-office message in Gmail is a simple yet essential practice in professional communication. It informs senders about your unavailability, sets expectations for response times, and offers alternative contacts for urgent matters. It helps to maintain transparency, manage expectations, and ensure that important messages are promptly addressed, even when the recipient is not there to respond.
How to set an out-of-office message in Gmail for yourself
- Open your Gmail
- Click on Settings in the top right corner
3. Click on See all settings
4. Select Out of Office Autoreply on
5. Select the first day and Last day you want your Autoreply to be sent. You can also set up your Autoreply without the end date if you are not sure when you will be back. In that case, remember to turn the autoreply off when you are back in the office.
6. Write the Subject of your out of office message
7. Write the body of yout out-of-office message
8. You can choose to only send the out-of-office response to people in your Contacts list or only in your organization
9. Click on Save changes
How to set an out-of-office message in Gmail for another user in GAM
There are various scenarios where a Google Admin might need to set up an out-of-office message for another user: an employee’s unexpected sick leave, departure from the organization, or simple forgetfulness. However, setting up out-of-office messages in GAM (Google Apps Manager, a command line tool for Google Workspace admins) is not as straightforward as one might hope, and it requires a certain level of expertise in coding.
You can find clear instructions on how to set an out-of-office message in GAM here.
How to set an out-of-office message in Gmail for another user with Florbs
Since there is no easy and quick solution to set an out-of-office message in Gmail in GAM, as well as perform many other seemingly simple Google admin tasks, we created Florbs Admin Automation solution to save you valuable time.
Tip: Create a standardized out-of-office message template for all employees in your organization to automatically set up in their Gmail settings. This practice will guarantee that all out-of-office messages maintain a professional tone, provide accurate information, and reflect the organization’s branding consistently. To ensure that the out-of-office message template is easily accessible to all employees from their first day, it’s recommended to incorporate it into the employee onboarding workflow. This is achieved with just a couple of clicks with the Florbs Admin Automation solution.
1. Click on Out-of-Office
2. Click on Add template
3. Type the name for this template. Saving and reusing a template can save you a lot of time when setting up out-of-office messages in Gmail in the future.
4. Select Vacation responder on
5. Write the Subject for the out of office message
6. Write the body of the out-of-office message. You can use various formatting options within Florbs. Creating the message with variable fields allows you to reuse the same template for any user in the future.
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Tip: create custom variables for information that might differ per user, such as who to contact while they are away or the date they will be back.
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Tip 2: use out-of-office messages in Gmail to drive traffic and conversions while you are away. Insert a promotional image with a hyperlink – Florbs hosts the images you include in email signatures, so no need to worry about finding a server to host them.
7. You can choose to only send the out-of-office response to people in your Contacts list or only in your organization
8. Choose the Google Workspace user to assign the autoreply to
9. Click on Preview
10. You can preview the out-of-office message to make sure it displays correctly for all users you need to address.
11. Choose users to apply the out-of-office message to their Gmail
12. Click on Save changes
The best part? Unlike GAM, using Florbs does not require any coding skills. That means that even if the dedicated Google Workspace admin in your team is on vacation or sick leave or just overloaded with other tasks, another team member can easily manage out of office messages in Gmail if needed.
Interested to learn more? Check out Florbs Admin Automation solution: https://florbs.io/admin-automation/
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