If a client replies to one of your messages while you are on leave, they hear nothing back and often assume they have been forgotten. An out-of-office reply answers them straight away, in your name, on the channel they used — so they know when to expect you and what to do if it cannot wait.
It is per person, not per organisation: your out-of-office answers replies to your messages only. A colleague's client is untouched by it.
Switch it on
Select your name or initials at the top right to open the account menu.
Find the Out of office row and turn the switch on.
Where you have set dates, the row also shows when it applies — on until 3 September while it is running, or from 1 September while it is waiting to start.
Write the message
In the same menu, select Edit out-of-office message.
The Out-of-office message dialog explains what it does: While out of office is on, clients who reply to your messages automatically receive this message back on the same channel.
Type what the client should read in Message — up to 5,000 characters. Say when you are back and who to contact if it is urgent. The empty box suggests the shape: I'm currently out of the office and will reply when I return...
Optionally set Starts (optional) and Ends (optional). The dialog explains why that is worth doing: With dates set, the auto-reply switches itself on and off within that window — no need to remember to toggle it.
Select Save & turn on — or Save, if out of office is already on.
If the end is before the start, the dialog says The end date must be after the start date. and will not save.
Leave both dates empty and the reply stays on until you turn it off yourself. That is the setting most people forget about, so prefer the dates.
What the client gets
When a client replies to a message that was sent by you, Joy answers on the same channel they used — SMS, email or WhatsApp — with the text you wrote. The auto-reply is recorded on the client's timeline as Automatic out-of-office reply, so anyone looking at the client can see it happened and read what was sent.
The client's own reply is untouched: it still lands in Messages for the team to pick up. The auto-reply does not answer the question, close the conversation, or mark anything as done. It buys you time; a colleague still needs to deal with the message.
When it will not fire
Being clear about this matters, because staff otherwise assume every client got an answer.
The client replied to a colleague's message. The reply belongs to whoever sent the original message. Their out-of-office setting applies, not yours.
No one can be attributed. If the original message has no staff member recorded against it, no auto-reply is sent.
Outside your dates. Before the start or after the end, nothing is sent.
The message is empty. The switch being on is not enough — there has to be text.
Not a message channel. Only SMS, email and WhatsApp replies trigger it.
Already answered recently. The same client gets at most one automatic reply from you every six hours, however many times they write. Someone sending five texts in a row gets one auto-reply, not five.
A duplicate delivery. If the provider sends us the same inbound message twice, only the first counts.
Turning it off
Open the account menu and turn the Out of office switch off, or let the end date do it. Switching it off does not delete the message you wrote — it is there next time you need it.