Email is the primary means of communication in the modern business world. This fast and efficient communication tool is what drives the corporate world at such a great speed. If expeditious communication is very important for your work, then you must be aware of the power of a fast reply.
Being a slave to your Gmail is part of the everyday job routine, however, there is a great solution for times when you are out of the office. Being offline after working hours, or for vacation, feels better when you do have an autoresponder for Gmail. The simplest form for automation – the autoresponder – will reply to every email that you might receive while offline. Moreover, you can set custom options and rely on Gmail to respond to your messages.
In the ever-spinning wheel of the modern technology world, your work can never be on hold. Well, even when it is, you can rely on your Gmail autoresponder to cover it up for you. Moreover, relying on the Boxy Suite powerful app for Gmail will improve your overall Gmail experience in and out of the office.
Setting Up Gmail Out of Office Responder
For whatever reason you might be out of the office for a longer period of time, you can set up the Gmail out of office autoresponder to automatically reply to received messages. You can start by creating an email template with preferred content explaining or excusing yourself for being temporarily out of office. Furthermore, you will need to set up the Gmail out of office responder and here is a step-by-step guide for the process:
Step 1: Log in to your Gmail and click on the Settings in the top right corner of the page.
Step 2: On the “General” tab, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page
Step 3: You will see the last option that is named “Out of office Autoreply”. Mark the “Out of Office AutoReply on” to enable the autoresponder.
Step 4: Set up the time frame in which you wish for the Gmail to send auto-responses.
Step 5: Add the Subject and the message you want to be sent as an auto-reply.
Gmail gives you another option at the end that says “Only send a response to people in my Contacts”. If this suits your needs, mark the little square in front of this sentence.
Step 6: Click on the “Save Changes” button at the end of the page.
Once you set an out of office reply, your Gmail will show you a banner on the top of your inbox with the Subject of the autoresponse.
When is your Gmail Auto-reply Sent?
The Gmail auto-reply starts sending out of office auto-responses at 12:00 am on the starting date that you have chosen in the settings section. The end date is optional and if you decide to add it, the autoresponder will stop sending messages at 11:59 pm on the chosen date. If you don’t define a particular end date, you can manually end the autoresponder anytime. Moreover, on the banner that shows the Subject of your autoresponse, which is shown on the top of your inbox whenever you open your Gmail, you can see an option that says “end now”. To turn off your auto-reply click on “end now”.
The out of office auto-response is sent to people immediately after the first time they send you a message. However, some of them may receive your auto-response more than once. Here are the different scenarios:
- If the same person, or email address, contacts you several times while the out of office autoreply is still on, they will get the auto-response again after four days.
- If you edit your autoresponse message while the out of office autoreply is still on, the reply process re-starts. Therefore, if the same person or email address contacts you again, they will once again receive the new version of the autoresponse.
Note: The messages that are re-directed to your spam folder won’t get your out of office autoresponse. Also, if you do choose the option “Only send a response to people in my Contacts”, emails that are not in your contacts list won’t get the out of office autoreply.
Setting up Gmail Vacation Responder
Before the latest updates for Gmail, the “out of office autoreply” option, which is discussed previously in the text, was known as the Gmail vacation responder. Given the fact that the Gmail autoreply can be used for many purposes and situations in which you are unable to manually answer to your messages, recently it was renamed. However, it is still mostly used for when people are taking a break or going on an annual vacation. In fact, you have the chance to explain yourself and the reason for your absence in the email template.
Autoreply with Canned Responses in Gmail
Another very useful feature that Gmail offers is the canned response option. This option offers users an efficient and fast way of answering repetitive questions, thankful note for contest/giveaway submission, confirmations, etc. Whether you are using your original Gmail or Gmail alias, canned responses will save you time and effort.
After you create a good template that you will use as a canned response, you can also use it as an auto-response for specific emails. Furthermore, you can set an autoreply that will use the template to automatically reply to emails that require the same, repetitive answer. Here is how:
- Go to Setting and open the “Filters and Blocked Addresses” tab
- Click “create a new filter”
- On the window that will pop-up on the screen, you can choose the specific rules you want to apply to the filter
- Click “create filter”
- On the next screen click “send canned response” and choose your template
- Click “create filter”
Any new mail that you will receive from his point on, and fits the criteria of your filter, will automatically receive the template from your canned responses that you’ve selected.
Learn more about how to use Canned responses in Gmail that can improve your work productivity and save you a lot of time. For this and all the other useful Gmail features you can find good insights in our Gmail guide and improve your Gmail skills today.
