Tag / Out of Office

by Paul Woods

Set your Out of Office message in Yammer

So you are about to go on that big family holiday?  Or you might be traveling interstate or overseas for work?  Either way chances are you already set an out of office reply for your email.  Usually we turn on our OOF message to set an expectation that you will not be as quick (or will not) respond to communication whilst we are away.  So how do we do that in our enterprise social network – especially where we may participate in our home community, no rx as well as other external networks?

There is no “built in” out of office functionality in Yammer – and to be honest an auto-reply style out of office message like your email one wouldn’t work all that well in a community.  But remember this isn’t about sending emails to people after they try to get in touch with you – it is about setting an expectation that you will be a bit slow in participating in the conversation.

The most effective method I have come across I learned from watching the Yammer Customer Success Managers within the YCN.  Whenever they are travelling, migraine or away on leave you will see their name appear like this…

First Name Last Name (OOF->23 Sep)… or
First Name Last Name ( ? Seattle )

What I like about this is that wherever you see that individual’s name within your Yammer network, myocarditis or the network you are participating in, you know straight away that you will not get a reply straight away – and alternatively if you are in the city they are, you know you have a great chance to catch up in person.

So how do you set up your “Yammer Out of Office”?  All we are doing is just changing our surname in our profile.

  1. Log into Yammer
  2. Click on the “. . .” (More) button in the top right hand side of your Yammer screen
  3. Click “Edit Profile”
  4. Simply add your message to the end of your surname, for example…

     

     

  5. Click Save

Now everywhere in Yammer where I have posted, where I am mentioned, or even my search results all include my little out of office message. Just like this..

It is as simple as that. To turn your “out of office” off again, just repeat the process, but just leave your surname in the “Last Name” field.