You can set up an out-of-office message in webmail. This is useful if you are temporarily unavailable. It informs anyone who e-mails you that they should not expect an immediate response.
In your out-of-office message, indicate the dates you will be unavailable and the reason. If a colleague is handling urgent matters in your absence, you can include their contact information. When appropriate, you can also set up automatic forwarding of e-mails to your colleague.
Set up an out-of-office message
1. Log in to webmail.
2. In the menu on the left, click 'Settings', then select 'Out of Office'.
3. Here you fill in the required fields.
- Subject: enter the desired subject for your out-of-office message.
- Body: enter the out-of-office message that you wish to be sent.
- Start time: select the date and time during which the out-of-office message should be active.
- End time: select the date and time when the out-of-office message should become inactive.
- Status: set to 'On', unless you want to temporarily disable the out-of-office message during the specified period.
There are also a number of advanced settings.
Reply sender address: you may leave this field empty, unless you want to reply on behalf of a specifically created identity.
My email addresses: you can fill this in if, for example, you have an old e-mail address that forwards to your current address. By default, no out-of-office message will be sent, unless you enter that address here.
Reply interval: determines the period during which recipients will not receive your out-of-office message again. If this is set to seven days and someone e-mails you multiple times during that period, they will only receive the message once.
Put the out-of-office rule after: Many webmail clients let you create multiple rules (e.g., move messages to a folder, forward them, delete spam, etc.). By specifying "Put the out-of-office rule after", you are telling the system to execute your other rules first, and only afterwards check whether the out-of-office reply should be sent. If you have a rule that, for example, forwards certain e-mails to a colleague, and the out-of-office rule is set after that, the mail will be forwarded before the auto-reply is triggered.
Action for incoming message: choose what should happen to e-mails for which an out-of-office message has been sent to the sender. For instance, they can be kept or a copy can be forwarded.
4. When you have filled in everything as desired, click 'Save' at the bottom of the page to save your out-of-office message.