For times when the entire district will be off, System Administrators can set up an Account-wide Out of Office and Auto Reply, making it easy to communicate to your customers that your entire team is away and to let them know when you’ll be back.
Here’s How:
- Go to Settings > Out of Office
- Make sure you are on the Account-wide Tab (not Personal Tab)
- Under the Schedule section, create a title for this district-wide closure
- Select the appropriate date range by clicking on the calendar icons
- Under the Set An Auto Reply section, enter the message you would like displayed to customers on behalf of the district
- This message should set expectations with the customer about when to expect a response
Note: The Auto Reply replaces the follow-up thank-you email, and will prevent tickets from aging.
Modifying Out of Office Reply
Once an account wide out of office reply is created and the reply is active, the reply cannot be deleted. This is due to dialogue aging stopping for all the tickets for that particular day and displaying the incorrect age for the tickets received on that date.
To modify an existing out of office you will need to modify the end date of the existing out of office to the current date, then create a new out of office. This will end the current out of office reply, and continue with the new out of office with the correct end date.
Example: Your current out of office has been set up with the dates December 23rd - January 1st. You want the out of office to end on January 2nd.
What to do
- First, modify the end date of the existing out of office to match today's date. In the example listed above, this would be December 23rd.
- Next, create a new out of office, with a modified title (ex. Holiday Break 2) and same auto reply, with the correct dates. The new out of office will need to start with the date proceeding today's date. In this example your new out of office dates will be December 24th to January 2nd.
Once your new out of office is created the auto reply will continue without interruption.
Setting Exceptions
You can also set exceptions to your account-wide out of office. If, for example, your safety and security team will continue to answer tickets during the time others are away. Customers who reach out to the Topics that are part of the exception will continue to receive the standard thank you email, and tickets for those topics will continue to age.
To add an exception, simply click on the “Add an Exception” option below the auto-reply and select the applicable Topics.