See when someone is out of office in Gmail and Hangouts Chat

What’s changing

Now, when you have an Out of office (OOO) entry on your calendar, a notice of that OOO status will appear in Gmail and Hangouts Chat when people try to contact you.

In Gmail, we’ll show a banner about the recipient being out of office and when they’ll be back in the email compose window.




In Hangouts Chat, you’ll also see a small notification in the chat compose window alerting you that the person you’re trying to message is out of office.



Who’s impacted

End users

Why you’d use it

With this launch, before people even hit “send,” your time out of office is visible in more places across G Suite, meaning you get more uninterrupted time away. As a sender, you’ll also have more confidence that you’re messaging people at an appropriate time.

How to get started

  • Admins: No action required. 
  • End users: No action required. These notices will automatically start showing up when anyone whose calendar you have access to has an out of office event scheduled.

Additional details

If you’d like to disable sharing of availability information to other G Suite apps, you can do so in Calendar under Calendar settings > Access permissions. Just deselect “Show calendar info in other Google apps, limited by access permissions.”

Helpful links



Availability

Rollout details
Notification in Gmail and setting in Calendar


Notification in Hangouts Chat


G Suite editions

  • Available to all G Suite editions


On/off by default?

  • This feature will be ON by default and can be disabled in your Calendar settings.


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