The Moth

It is the season where many people are Out of Office (which is not acronymed as OOO, but as OOF – read here for explanation).

Our team has a shared calendar on our SharePoint site where everyone adds their holidays/vacations so the PM can take actions accordingly. In addition, it is customary for individuals to send a Meeting Request (called S+ in homage of the Schedule+ product) to the team's distribution list's (DL's) alias that describe the OOF schedule. It is here where you need to be careful.

1. Do not request responses
2. Show the time as Free with no Reminder (remember, your OOF ends up in my calendar so I don’t need a reminder or my calendar to show as anything other than FREE for your vacation)
3. Create a separate appointment for your own calendar that shows the time as "Out of Office" (so people can see that when trying to schedule a meeting with you)
4. Setup your Out Of Office Assistant (from the Tools menu) with an appropriate message (so they understand you will not be responding promptly – also touched on in #33 of my email rules)

There is a more detailed blog post (and the comments section is useful too) here.

Speaking of OOF, I will be out of the physical office starting now and I'll be working from home in Greece until mid-January (with a few holiday and vacation days thrown in for good measure). So, unless you work with me on daily basis, you'll see no change… if you were planning on visiting me in-person, use email instead ;-)