Throughout the year, staff will need to take time off whether for vacation, personal leave, sick days, etc. This guide is written as an instruction set to assist you with setting up your out of office notifications, Teams status messages and more!

Important: 

Before beginning this guide it is essential to have access to the Permstaff Vacation Calendar. If you do not, please follow our guide here to add it:

How To Open Permstaff Shared Vacation Calendar

Also note that the Permstaff Vacation Calendar is NOT a replacement for your personal calendar.

Lastly, the vacation calendar will not appear in Microsoft Teams calendar as Teams only shows your calendar and currently there are no plans for this to change as per Microsoft. You will need to check Outlook to see the vacation calendar.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• In/Out Board
• Short Term / Short Notice Leave
• Extended Leave
  • Step 1: Book your vacation and add it to the Shared Vacation Calendar
  • Step 2 : Set Teams status and Outlook Out of Office 1 week before vacation
  • Step 3: Set signature in email 1 week ahead of scheduled time off
  • Step 4: Forward your phone

In/Out Board

If leaving for a short period of time (ie. lunch break, meeting offsite, etc.) there is a staff board at reception where staff are required to move their name badge to the appropriate column (in, out). Detailed instructions are as follows:

• When you come into the office, move the magnet beside your name to the IN column.
• When you leave, move the magnet to the OUT column.
  • If you leave but will be back, add another magnet to the time you expect to return.
• Standard work from home days are Wednesdays and Fridays.  When you leave on Tuesday and Thursday, move the magnet to the WFH column, not the out column.
  • If you are working from home on a non-standard day, notify reception who will move the magnet to WFH.
• If you are off unexpectedly, please notify reception who will move your magnet to OUT (if not already marked out).

If your name on the board has been missed, please go to reception to pick a happy face magnet and they will add your name to the board.

Short Term / Short Notice Leave

Short term leave is defined as anything less than 3 days out of the office. This could be a personal emergency, sick leave, etc. In these situations you only need to follow steps 1 and 2 below if you know well enough in advance. In the case of sick leave, emergencies, follow steps 1 and 2 minus setting a reminder alert.

Extended Leave

Extended leave is defined as anything more than 3 days out of the office.

Step 1: Book your vacation and add it to the Shared Vacation Calendar

Once your vacation or leave has been confirmed, add it to your own calendar for the days you are off and include the following information. 

1. Give the event a subject of "Vacation", "Extended Leave" or whatever else you see fit as a description for your absence. Your name will automatically get added to the event in the shared vacation calendar.
2. Add your event to the Permstaff Vacation Calendar by choosing that room location in the 'search for room or location' section.
3. Set a reminder a week before to alert you to perform some actions before you leave. This will only notify you.
4. Include the details you'd like to be reminded for, in this case we'd like to remind ourselves to turn on our out of office a week beforehand and also remind ourselves to set our vacation signature in email a week before we leave.
   
   

Once you have submitted this event you will receive an email saying that the Permstaff Vacation Calendar has accepted. This event will now be in the shared vacation calendar. If you need to cancel this event, you may do so by cancelling it from your own calendar and it will reflect in the shared calendar. 

Also, this calendar will allow conflicts (multiple people to go on vacation at the same time) but will notify you when booking that there is a conflict with someone else. This is by design so that for example if both members of the IT Department try to take time off at that same time they will be alerted.

Step 2 : Set Teams status and Outlook Out of Office 1 week before vacation

Microsoft Teams has a handy feature that allows you to actually update your Teams status and Out of Office at the same time as well as schedule when these turn on and off. Please enable these notifications the week before you leave for vacation by following the Microsoft Guide here:

Update Teams Status and Out of Office:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/schedule-an-out-of-office-status-in-teams-e3ce705a-cc43-4f7d-9418-0642ec5f6bd8

Step 3: Set signature in email 1 week ahead of scheduled time off

If you will be away for an extended period of time (ie, vacation, medical leave, etc.) please update your email signature in Outlook to include a message to staff that you will be away at a minimum of one week before leave. You can update your signature by following the appropriate Microsoft Guide here:

Outlook Desktop Application:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/change-an-email-signature-86597769-e4df-4320-b219-39d6e1a9e87b

Outlook on the web:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/create-and-add-an-email-signature-in-outlook-5ff9dcfd-d3f1-447b-b2e9-39f91b074ea3

You may use the following message as a guide:

*** Please be aware that I will be out of the office starting next week from DATE HERE to DATE HERE. If you require assistance while I am away, please contact ALTERNATE CONTACT NAME HERE INCLUDING DETAILS otherwise I will reply to email upon my return. ***

Step 4: Forward your phone

Please make sure that you forward your phone to someone who is able to field questions on your behalf while you are away and make sure that this person is aware of your leave. As there are many varieties of phones around the AMS offices, please contact AMS IT for assistance if you are unaware on how to do this.