Microsoft Teams Integration: Turning on the Out of Office / Status Setting within Teams

If you've enabled Vacation Tracker's Out of Office (OOO) autoreply, the same OOO message and status flow through to Microsoft Teams automatically. Anyone who tries to message you in Teams sees an "Out of Office" indicator and gets the autoreply, just like in Outlook.

How Outlook OOO and Teams Status Are Linked

In Microsoft 365, the Out of Office setting in Outlook is shared with Microsoft Teams. When OOO is on, Teams reflects it in two places:

• Status — your name shows the "Out of Office" indicator next to it.
• Autoreply — anyone messaging you in Teams gets the same autoreply text you set in Outlook.

Microsoft's reference: Schedule an out-of-office status in Microsoft Teams.

What Vacation Tracker Does

When the OOO autoreply is enabled on a Leave Type and a User goes on that leave, Vacation Tracker turns on the Out of Office autoreply automatically — for both Outlook and Teams. No manual setup per leave; the moment the User's leave starts, their status and autoreply flip on. They flip back off automatically when the leave ends.

Reply Audience: Contacts vs Anyone

Microsoft Teams lets you control who receives the autoreply: only your contacts, or anyone who messages you. Vacation Tracker doesn't override this — it sets the autoreply text and turns it on, but the audience setting stays under your control inside Teams.

To change which audience receives your autoreply:

• In Teams, find the autoreply / OOO settings and pick only my contacts or anyone.
• Microsoft's docs walk through this in detail — see Option 2, steps 5 and 6 of Schedule an out-of-office status in Microsoft Teams.

Configuring OOO in Vacation Tracker

The OOO autoreply is configured per Leave Type in Vacation Tracker. Admins toggle which Leave Types should trigger an OOO message; individual Users can still toggle it on or off when requesting a specific leave.

• Can I Choose Which Leave Types Have the Out of Office Message? — pick which Leave Types are eligible.
• Can Admins/Approvers Toggle OOO for Users? — toggle OOO on individual Users.