What I learned from turning my ‘Out of Office’ auto-replies on for a month

Post by dorfsmay » Tue, Oct 01, 2013, 1:11 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #11

retube wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't agree at all. Whilst it may be asynchronous, people do have an expectation of a reply within a reasonable time frame - hours to a few days depending on the relationship. It is _incredibly_ infuriating when people are out for 2 weeks and don't alert you to this fact. You end up wasting time waiting for a repsonse when you culd have immediately sought assistance from an alternative contact. It's not spam. It's po…

> Whilst it may be asynchronous, people do have an expectation of a reply within a reasonable time frame - hours to a few days depending on the relationship. Not at all, unless frequent contacts are expected in which case you should be warned through other channels. > You end up wasting time waiting for a repsonse when you culd have immediately sought assistance from an alternative contact. If you need fast turnaroun…

Post by zamalek » Tue, Oct 01, 2013, 1:15 PM UTC

Post by cygwin98 » Tue, Oct 01, 2013, 1:26 PM UTC

levosmetalo wrote: post #10

lsc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eh, the big problem is people on mailing lists. Everyone hates out of office emails in mailing lists. Vacation messages, when emailing individuals? Yeah, in the technical sphere, they are generally considered kinda rude. In the business sphere, the opposite. So yeah, here on hn, with a foot in both camps, eh, just make sure you don't vacation message a mailing list.

That's easy to say, but hard to actually do. As much as I hate spamming mailing lists, it's not like I'm going to spend two days carefully specifying answering rules for every autoreply message target in my Outlook that I must use at work. So, the burden of doing that properly is on Microsoft or company IT to make sure who will get the auto reply, while all user can and has to do is to tick a check box and type an ac…

Post by minikites » Tue, Oct 01, 2013, 1:30 PM UTC

scottmagdalein wrote: post #12

"some issues resolve themselves" is not true. What you really mean is, "someone else resolved the issue."

Post by spongle » Tue, Oct 01, 2013, 1:30 PM UTC

zamalek wrote: post #23

I while back I set up a rule on my mail server that would effectively OOF respond if people in my company if they didn't CC my manager (indicating that you should CC my manager so that he can triage whatever issue you may need me for). People started coming to me with real issues (instead of the "reflex ask the senior engineer") with valuable evidence (logs, etc.) - they not only needed to convince me to use my time…