COVID-19 pandemic has affected almost every country and business in the world. We are living in unprecedented times. Many of us are fortunate to be still working from our home, thanks to the nature of our job. Others, whose job role cannot be fulfilled remotely have no other option than to #StayHome. In this case, you can set up Out of Office in Salesforce also apart from your Email client.
Out of Office in Salesforce is only available in Lightning Experience. Once it is enabled, the message displays immediately and does not wait till the start date.
Setting up Out of Office in Salesforce is a no brainer. Log in as an Administrator into your Salesforce org -> Click ‘Setup’
Type ‘chatter settings’ in Quick Find Box -> Click ‘Chatter Settings’
Click ‘Edit’
Scroll down to ‘Out of Office’ section -> Tick ‘Users can set Out of Office messages’ checkbox
Click Save
Navigate to ‘Sales’ app -> Click your Profile picture (User icon/ Avatar) -> Then click ‘Your Name’
Click ‘Out of Office’
Tick ‘Set Out of Office message’ checkbox -> Specify ‘Start Date’, ‘End Date’ -> ‘Message’ pops automatically in the format “Out of Office: Start Date – End Date” depending on the dates you select -> Click ‘Save’ Note: You can customize the Message as per the situation. e.g. Replace Out of Office with ‘Work From Home’, ‘Home Quarantine’etc. However, the Message field max length is only 40 characters.
The Out of Office message is saved and can be seen besides your name
Your message appears almost everywhere your name appears in Chatter 🙂
References Useful URLs
- Set an Out of Office Message in Chatter – Help Article (10 mins) – https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=collab_profile_out_of_office.htm&type=5
How can we give permission to, for example team leads and allow them to set there member’s out of office for them?
Or is t even possible? I saw that system admin can set other peoples out of office status for them. but we dont want team leads to have system admin capability.
Hi Johnee, here are the options that I can think of.
1. Use the Delegated Administration Feature and while configuring the Deleted Group, check the box to ‘Enable Group for Login Access’. Here is my step-by-step guide on delegated administration – https://www.asagarwal.com/step-by-step-guide-to-delegated-administration-in-salesforce/. See if this helps.
2. Custom Develop the functionality using LWC & Apex
3. Probably use Screen Flows – but this will need to be tested.
Thanks,
Ashish
Can we create outofoffice record for other people. Tried flows which run in User context so not plausible as only self and admin can set ooo and also custom Lwc with a apex controller having without sharing. Can you suggest a work around if you know any. Thank you
I don’t think we can create “Out of Office” for other people, Sharique. At least not something that I am aware of. However, one thing that admins can do is login as another user and then set out of office. But this is a manual work. 🙁
Can you use this in any logic related to case reassignment? e.g. When someone tries to reassign a case to an OOO user, they are notified that the user is OOO before the case reassignment happens?
Hi Jonathan, to the best of my knowledge and testing, currently you cannot use any logic with Out of Office Setting (at least not declaratively using Salesforce out-of-box features). The only impact that I have seen so far is that when you @ mention user in Chatter posts, it shows “Out of Office” with dates along with the name.
Hi Jonathan,
Yeah you can implement it with triggers to case and outofoffice object. OutOfOffice records have start, end date and userId fields that you can query, you can use these to implement validation when assigning or reassigning to OOO users.
Thanks for highlighting that Johnee
Can the out of office feature be delegated to a supervisor to enable out of office on another users behalf? In the event a user forgets to set their out of office before they leave for vacation.
Hi Brian, to the best of my knowledge and research this cannot be delegated to another user. If the user has forgotten to set out of office before vacation, they can still do it from the Salesforce Mobile App or the Salesforce admins can login as that user and set the out of office message.
Can we increase the message field limit?
No, it can’t be increased. The maximum length allowed is 40 characters