"Out of Office" Scheduling + Auto Reply
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Matt Lavergne
We should be able to adjust or add an auto-reply feature to any incoming messages through DC for when we have our days off to avoid any fumbles, or at the least, have an auto-reply that can redirect our customers to our managers for further escalation if needed. Holidays can happen at any day of the week, so marking those as off, along with our normal days off, should be a feature. This would also eliminate the pile of tasks and touchpoints that are auto-generated for Monday mornings when closed on the Sunday, and would benefit our workloads immensely.
I've seen a few threads that have a similar feature request, especially for telling the DC system what days we have off, but I think adding an "out-of-office" auto-reply would help with not avoiding our customers on our days off, and also not increasing our fumble rates when trying to enjoy our time away from the dealership.
Shelby Parker
Hiya Matt Lavergne, thanks for this post! I have a few more questions for you:
- What specific days and times do you typically need the "out-of-office" auto-reply feature to be active?
- How would you like the auto-reply message to be customized for different scenarios, such as holidays versus regular days off?
- Would you prefer the auto-reply feature to automatically sync with a calendar, or would you like to manually set the days off within the system?
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Matt Lavergne
Shelby Parker
- I'd prefer to have a schedule that I can set (and my manager approves or vice-versa) that tells DC when I'm supposed to be in office. Right now it appears to have just the normal workdays (M-Sat) as an available day for tasks, fumbles, and all that, even if I'm not in at certain hours or off on certain days.
- That's where the auto-reply comes in. You can then set it up like normal, and have an option to activate the auto-reply before leaving for the day if a Holiday or Vacation is approaching. There should also be a secondary auto-reply that can be set for a weekly repeat, that way we can set it for our days off that are going to repeat (such as Sunday tasks pushed to Monday during my own work hours).
- If the auto-reply could sync with a regional calendar (like GCal or something) to auto-recognize statuatory holidays for the region, then that's even better. Otherwise, it could be setup manually, so long as we have the OPTION to choose both Holidays/Vacation days as well as normal days off so that the auto-reply can be adjusted for those days. This is more of a cultural thing as some holidays are in observance of something (say Veterans/Memorial Day) in which a generic auto-reply may come across distasteful, so having a customized version insert itself from our regular "day off" auto-reply would be a nice feature to have.