Microsoft Teams is frequently used by individuals to stay in touch with coworkers, whether they are in the office or working remotely. As a powerful communication tool, it’s essential for maintaining contact with your team. But how can you inform your colleagues that you are not available? Microsoft Teams provides a feature that allows you to set your profile to “Out of Office,” enabling others to know when you’ll be unavailable—whether it’s for a few hours, several days while on vacation, or for an extended period.
How to Set Up Your ‘Out of Office’ Status in Teams
Your Microsoft Teams and Outlook calendars are integrated, meaning your Out of Office status and automatic replies are synced between the two platforms. Changes made in Teams will be reflected in Outlook and vice versa, but setting it up in Teams is generally simpler.
You can follow these steps on both the online version and the desktop app of Microsoft Teams.
To start, click on your profile picture in Teams and select Schedule an out of office as a shortcut. This action will lead you to the settings menu. Alternatively, you can click the three-dot icon next to your profile and navigate to Settings > General, then scroll to the bottom to find out-of-office settings and click Schedule.
Switch on the automatic replies toggle and enter a message that explains how long you will be unavailable in the text box provided. Keep in mind that this message is intended for your internal colleagues. If you save your settings now, you’ll need to deactivate the automatic replies manually upon your return since you won’t set specific start and end times for this status. This message will be sent automatically if you are invited to a Teams meeting during your absence.
If you want to extend your automatic replies to people outside your organization, click Send replies outside my organization and type a similar message in the provided text box. Then, select Send replies during a time period and specify the dates for your absence, ensuring your automatic reply activates during that timeframe.
Afterward, click Save, and your settings will synchronize with both Teams and Outlook.
Setting an ‘Out of Office’ Reminder on Teams
After configuring your Out of Office status in Microsoft Teams, you can create a message to appear in your chats, notifying colleagues of your unavailability without them needing to send you an email. Once again, access your profile icon to find the option to Schedule and set your out-of-office status. Additionally, there’s a “Set Status Message” feature in this menu, where you can specify how long you won’t be accessible.
By clicking on your profile icon, you’ll open a dropdown menu where you select Set Status Message and input your message. If someone tries to message you, this status will be visible in the chat. Keep in mind that this is separate from the Out of Office setting and does not sync with Outlook.
While Microsoft Teams is incredibly useful for communication, if you encounter any issues, consider looking up solutions to resolve them.
