How Auto OOO came to be

Many times we have had to deal with emails that go like:

Hey! I sent you an email two days ago and I still haven’t heard from you. I need your input ASAP!!! Can I give you a call? Regards,

Sometimes followed a few hours later by others like:

Ms. Tane, I find your lack of response disrespectful and you are putting the project at risk. We should be re-evaluating our current engagement model and consider if our collaboration continues to make sense for both parties.

What is worse, we read this type of messages a few days later. And a suite of urgent catch ups need to happen in order to manage the situation, distracting us from the most important tasks as we get back to work. Situations like this are very unfortunate, as we might just be out of office for a few days for a variety of reasons: taking care of a loved one, travelling or just plainly taking some time off. What is certain is that we did not intend to keep others hanging and waiting for us to get back to work. And, of course, no project is at risk :) This takes the story to its main point: situations like the one described above are totally avoidable!

We are big fans of productivity and letting the machines do what they are best at: repeating tasks. Auto OOO let’s you forget about enabling your GMail auto responder because it will do it for you, inferring your availability from your Google Calendar.

As Auto OOO was being tested by a selected group of folks, mainly Friends & Family, feedback was very positive! An interesting comment was:

I am sorry, but I do not ever enable the auto responder, so I am not your target audience.

On the contrary! Auto OOO is about using it once and forgetting that it exists, letting it do its magic for you. Meaning: setting up your auto responder is considered a good practice in healthy collaboration environments (if you don’t know what a good out of office message, check Out Of Office message best practices), but enabling it is not top of mind for most. This is exactly what Auto OOO does, so don’t procrastinate and install it now!