From OOO to OHH! Tools to improve the out of office message

Even though we should have learned throughout the holiday season to distrust each “new message” notification, they still get our interest. This time of the year is terrible. So many times, instead of the expected reply to our message, we receive automatic emails with the subject: “out of the office”.

Each of these moments is a missed opportunity. If we invested so much energy in planning our vacations, why not take a moment to think about the message that all our contacts will receive in our absence?

We were looking for tools that help us deal with the ‘out of office’ dilemma and here are some examples to get out of the default text.

1. Customized by a bot

This site ooogenerator.com helps you create different personalized OOO messages that are customized with your vacation dates and what you are going to do. It offers two options each time, and there are some very fun ones.

We also found this app that allows you to create a bot that responds to your WhatsApp while you want some instant messaging peace. And one very interesting tip: if you download WhatsApp for Business, you can use it to schedule automatic responses directly from there.

2. For the Simpsons fans

Useful for those who take days away very often, Karsten Köhler was inspired by the familiar appearances of Troy McClure and recounted his recurrent absences in the form of movie titles (fiction or reality? Who knows).

3. For the paranoid

Disconnecting or not disconnecting during the holidays, that’s the dilemma. Sometimes it is best to leave the decision in the hands of third parties, as in this case a few years ago -when blackberry was still used- …

4. For millennials

An out-of-office written entirely with emojis? Yes! And we all understand it perfectly! Right?

5. For those who (don’t) think everything is urgent

“If it is an emergency, please call 911.
For everything else, I’m not dead. I’m just out of office till [date]. So be patient.”

This year when you have to configure the automatic message, are you going to choose the classic and impersonal text or would you go for something more? If you try something creative, tell us! We’d love to read it!

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