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With absentify’s out-of-office reply feature, HR admins can centrally manage and configure automated out-of-office messages for employees. This feature ensures clear, consistent communication for all scheduled absences by applying templates directly in employees’ Outlook settings.
Note: This feature is only available in the Plus Plan, allowing administrators to set and manage templates for all employees. In other plans, employees configure their out-of-office replies individually. See the employee guide here.

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Benefits of centralized management

  • Consistency: Ensures uniform communication for all employees.
  • Control: Admins can restrict employees from editing templates to maintain a professional tone.
  • Automation: Templates are applied automatically during scheduled absences and disabled when the absence ends.
  • Customization: Use placeholders to personalize replies for employees while maintaining a standard format.
Important: While absentify sets out-of-office replies in Outlook, employees can still manually change or disable these settings directly in Outlook. absentify cannot override such manual changes.

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Prerequisites

  1. Plus Plan: This feature is only available in the Plus Plan.
  2. Microsoft Tenant Admin Rights: To activate this feature, refer to the Outlook out-of-office permissions guide.
absentify uses the Microsoft Graph API with the Mail.ReadWrite permission. This permission is solely used to configure out-of-office replies; no other mailbox data is accessed or stored.

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Configuring automatic out-of-office replies

1

Access user management

  • Log into absentify and navigate to Settings > Users.
  • Select the employees for whom you want to manage out-of-office templates.
  • Click Bulk edit and choose Manage out of office notifications.
2

Select leave types

  • Select the leave type or multiple leave types you want to associate with an out-of-office template. All selected employees will share the same template for the chosen leave type(s).
  • Continue to template configuration.
3

Create the template

Write the internal and, optionally, external out-of-office messages. You can use dynamic placeholders to automatically insert absence-specific details into each message as soon as the leave request is active.
  • Basic placeholders:
    • {{startDate}}: Start date of the leave
    • {{startTime}}: Start time of the leave
    • {{dateOfReturn}}: Return date
    • {{timeOfReturn}}: Return time
    • {{name}}: Employee’s full name
    • {{firstName}}: Employee’s first name
    • {{lastName}}: Employee’s last name
  • Approver placeholders:
    • {{approverName}} and {{approverMail}}: Displays the name and email of the last approver in the configured sequence.
    • Specific approvers: Use placeholders like {{approverName[1]}}, {{approverMail[1]}}, {{approverName[2]}}, etc., to specify individual approvers. For instance:
      • {{approverName[1]}} and {{approverMail[1]}} display the first approver’s information.
      • {{approverName[2]}} and {{approverMail[2]}} display the second approver, and so forth.
    Approvers are listed in the order configured by the administrator. If no approver data exists, the placeholder will default to an empty string.
  • Representative placeholders:
    These placeholders are only available when the selected leave type requires an assigned representative. Learn more about this setting in the representative requirement guide.
    • {{representativeName}}: Name of the assigned representative
    • {{representativeEmail}}: Email address of the assigned representative
4

Preview and test the message

  • Use the Preview option to review the message.
  • Click Send test email to see how the message appears in an inbox.
5

Configure external replies

  • Enable replies for external contacts by selecting Send replies outside your organization.
  • Limit replies to contacts only by selecting Send replies only to contacts.
6

Allow or restrict employee customization

  • Decide if employees can customize their out-of-office messages:
    • Check the box if employees are allowed to make adjustments. Send them this guide for more information on the setup.
    • Restrict customization to enforce the admin-defined template.
Important: The “Allow customization” setting in absentify only controls whether the message can be edited within absentify — it does not restrict the user’s ability to change the message directly in Outlook.
Do you want to edit an individual user’s out-of-office message or view the currently set template?
Check out our guide on editing individual out-of-office messages.

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How out-of-office replies work

absentify allows you to automate out-of-office replies in Outlook based on the selected leave type and predefined templates. These replies are not sent by absentify directly — instead, absentify configures the settings in Outlook via Microsoft Graph API.
absentify does not send out-of-office messages itself.
All replies are triggered and handled by Microsoft Outlook and Azure after absentify applies the settings.

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Common issues and how to troubleshoot them

  • Manual changes in Outlook
    If a user manually disables or edits the out-of-office reply directly in Outlook, absentify cannot reapply the template until the next approved absence.
    Any manual changes override the configuration set by absentify.
  • Unable to apply automatic reply
    If absentify cannot apply the automatic reply, the affected user will receive an email with instructions to set it manually.
    Admins are also notified of the failed attempt via email.
  • Out-of-office message not being sent
    If no out-of-office replies are being sent from a user’s mailbox, but the sync log shows a successful configuration, the issue lies with Microsoft Outlook, not absentify.     Follow these steps to investigate:
    1. Go to Settings > Microsoft > View sync logs, or open the Microsoft sync logs directly.
    2. Locate the log for the user and the relevant date of the approved leave request.
    3. If the log shows “successful”, this confirms absentify has correctly applied the out-of-office configuration in Outlook.
    In this case, you can:
    • Check mail flow rules, mailbox permissions, or conditional settings in Outlook.
    • Escalate the issue internally to your Microsoft 365 administrator or to Microsoft/Azure support, as this is beyond absentify’s control.