[OT] Auto-Responders: Making E-Mail Suck, One Reply at a Time

I think one needs to make a distinction between a personal email account and a work email account. For a personal email account, I agree there is absolutely no need to turn on the OOF notice. For an email account at work, it's a different story. And i'd argue it's good to turn on the OOF notice when you are out of the office in case people wonder why you don't respond to their work requests.

This is a good reason (among numerous other reasons) for separating one's work email from the personal email. If you limit the work email account strictly for the work-related matters, I don't think your coleagues at work would complain much about your OOF notice,or I hope they shouldn't.

Well, the OOF notice also can direct people to whom they should call or email in case they do need help in my absence. Plus, Exchange Server is pretty good at limiting the OOF notice to only once per email address. I think to help keep the operations going smoothly is far more important than the little annoyance of receiving the OOF notice. If a colleague receives my OOF notice and therefore knows who else to call, then this OOF notice has served its useful purpose. Also think about it -- in every company there are people who are very quick to complain about someone else not being responsive. The OOF notice can save you from having unnecessary conversations.

Work policy dictates it in my case. Unfortunately people expect e-mail to be responded to in an urgent situation and they have issues with the phone, apparently. (One could say I encourage that behavior by normally following through with that expectation). My at work (day job) OOF reply lets them know who is my backup person or team. Nothing about having a high esteem of myself that I have to get over ;-)

Sure, I may (sadly) still check e-mail. I may also respond if I can quickly help a situation or give advice. Then again, I might be playing with the kids or out of range fly or ice fishing. If it is important, my auto responder directs them elsewhere and lets them know to not expect a response from me.

I wouldn't do it on a personal e-mail, my friends, family and consulting clients all have my personal cell. The few people that actually need to know when I am out of range are probably with me on that vacation (wife, kids, in-laws, etc) or get a quick note/phone call (consulting client, person taking care of my chickens/garden).

As far as running your own mailing list, filters.... Outlook, which is still a predominant corporate e-mail client, prefaces all of their auto replies with "Out of Office AutoReply:" seems to me that sorting through RSVPs could be easier with a couple filters excluding the majority of the auto responders.

I do agree with you that people misuse e-mail. If it requires an urgent response, call or IM. Don't expect an instant reply to every e-mail, etc.

I do not completely agree with you. Autoresponses can be useful, but I think (and agree with you), there should not be any personal information in there (like where you are, etc.). But you can name your deputies. And, all this is only true for work email addresses - privately you should behave differently (I do agree, again).

Another point, against phone calls - if you are working for an international company, you are not always able to initiate international calls. But - and I do agree again - instant messaging is a good alternative. In our case, not every employee is using IM at all, so this is also not a perfect solution, when using this alone.

Totally agree and I actually signed in to rate this article (despite being OT) 4 or 5 stars. But what gives? I don't see any rating control. Is it because you're Adam Machanic?

Cheers (and happy new year).

I must say that I don't agree with you - OOF are very useful, and I like not being immediately contactible when I am on holiday.  

I would really, REALLY like it if my clients could work with one of my colleagues while I am away.  I just have to direct them as to which one.

As an aside, I do think that people's stress levels are increased by never going offline - remote email is intrusive, IM & Twitter are even worse.

I agree that it is annoying when people use their OOF as a proxy Facebook status, but that is an implementation issue...

Yeah I've been getting several auto-responses today, from people who are in the office and have already sent me e-mail.  Seems like something that could either be done right when necessary, but usually not at all.

OOF replies suck, just as read-reciepts do (sometimes read-reciepts are handy though); however, both are company policy therefore I use both.

Maybe you don't like auto-responders, but it's often a necessary evil among very large companies.  I've worked for a number of Fortune 500's and can typical have communication with 10 people on a project.  I rarely know where all these people are and their vacation schedules, and I rarely send out anything to a large group I don't want them to read.  

So the, "Get over yourself" comment is a bit out of touch.  The out of office tracker isn't for those who would care less where I am, it is for those who do.  

Aliases= Another name for a black hole.  I can agree auto-responders can be a bit off the mark; eg. "My wife and I are in Hawaii!!!   ALoha!!"  I wish them well.  But I'm not dealing with potato chips.  I'm usually dealing with critical systems that mean Millions of dollars in lost revenue if they're down.  So yeah, I want to know that the network admin is out within 30 seconds if I send him an email.

Sorry Adam.  Just gonna have to part friends with different opinions.  

Adam,

I applause the decision to turn off ratings. IMO ratings have very little in common with quality. Thanks.

Enjoyed the thought provoking discussion and counter points.  

I think it's less about getting over one's self, and more about the expectations that are set by the organization. In my firm, a response time on an email which exceeds 4 hours is cause for question, and possibly official reprimand. That's simply the expectation which has been set. In that context, the OOF is the mechanism by which days off can ever actually be days off.

Both here and with previous employers, it's not that I think I'm important, it's that the culture sees email as "pseudo-synchronous" communication.

I also find the OOF to be an excellent tool for managing expectations. You're right, in that if something really is important, I'll get a phone call irrespective of my OOF. But frankly, when I'm on vacation, I don't want to take a phone call, either. By letting the sender know I'm out, I believe it sets the bar for "important" higher. People are (rightly) more reluctant to call someone on vacation than they are to call someone they think is simply prioritizing their request lower. This means I rarely get calls when I'm out except when something is legitimately critical.

And of course, since OCS syncs with Outlook for presence, setting the OOF also covers the case of why I'm not replying to IMs in a timely fashion.

All that said, I certainly agree that it is inappropriate to list extraneous information in the reply. All I need to know is how long you're out, and who to contact if that's too long for my request to wait.

I have always used a Yahoo account for my personal email.  Even for things company related, like downloading software.  This email address is me.  Not my company email.  My company email is for when I'm working.  I never give it out.  If you email me at work, I will respond from my yahoo account.  

So, when I'm on vacation, I set my work email to oof notification.  You will never see that notification.  No one will but coworkers.  But never do I set anything like that on yahoo.  I'm never away from that email anyway.  While on vacation, I will check that account, and even use it.  Its simply my personal communication device.

Work email is for that-work. Everything else can occur on my yahoo account.

I wish more people had themselves on a web presence apart from their company email.  They are no longer the same thing.  I have been able to continue using my yahoo mail even as I bounce from employer to employer.

my 2 cents

Something no one has mentioned is that in Exchange you can set the OOO message to respond only to internal mails, and not send notification to those addresses coming from outside the organization.  With that said, internal OOO messages are quite appropriate and helpful.  Sending external OOO messages, not so appropriate and not so helpful...

Sending OOO notifications to outside addresses potentially exposes too much information to outsiders and should be considered a security risk.

Phil, that's exactly what I do and recommend to everyone.  I think external OOF messages are an especially bad idea because many spam robots can use -any- sort of response, including an OOF, as a method to verify that a real human exists at the OOF-owner's email address and then mount other types of attacks.

Adam, I think your recommendations are good, especially about dealing with lists and, if an OOF is absolutely, what information to put into the OOF .  But as the sages have long said, the tone of the message is at least as important as the message itself.  Your tone is, alas, not so lighthearted.