SOURCE:    Vacation Tracker
TITLE:     Can I Choose Which Leave Types Have the Out-of-Office Message?
URL:       https://vacationtracker.io/knowledge-base/can-i-choose-which-leave-types-have-the-out-of-office-ooo-message/
LANG:      en
PUBLISHED: 2023-08-16
UPDATED:   2026-10-15
READING:   5 min
SUMMARY:   Choose which leave types trigger your automatic out-of-office reply: keep it for vacation and sick days, and skip it for working from home or half days.
Can I Choose Which Leave Types Have the Out-of-Office Message?
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Last updated on October 15, 2026

Can I Choose Which Leave Types Have the Out-of-Office Message?

Yes. The Automatic Out-of-Office (OOO) Reply runs on a per-Leave-Type allow list that each User controls themselves from their own settings. By default it covers every active leave type, but you can drop the ones that don't make sense for an OOO autoreply (Working from Home, half-day medical, etc.) so you only get prompted to set up an OOO message for the absences that actually warrant one.

You have OOO turned on with the default leave types — Vacation, Sick Day, Maternity Leave, and Working from Home all included. The 2-day-out OOO setup prompt fires for Working from Home too, which is noisy because you're not actually unreachable. Open the OOO settings, remove "Working from Home" from the list, and the prompts only fire for the leave types where an autoreply is genuinely useful.
Per-User setting
This list lives on each User's own Account Settings. There's no workspace-wide list of OOO leave types — every User configures their own. The Admin-level switch elsewhere only controls whether the OOO feature is available at all (see the related Admin OOO article); the leave-type list is owned by the User.

How to Open the Setting

  1. Sign in at app.vacationtracker.io with your own account.
  2. Click your name in the bottom-left of the sidebar, then choose Account Settings from the dropdown menu (or go directly to app.vacationtracker.io/app/settings/personal).
  3. On the Account Settings tab, scroll to the Configure Automatic Out-of-Office (OOO) Reply section.

The section header on the live page reads "Configure Automatic Out-of-Office (OOO) Reply". Below it sits the helper text:

From the app
"Once enabled, Vacation Tracker will notify you two days before your planned leave and present you with the opportunity to set up an automated Out of Office (OOO) reply message."

The Two Controls

Configure Automatic Out-of-Office (OOO) Reply section showing an Enabled toggle and a Leave Types multi-select with chips for each included type, followed by a Save button

There are two settings in this block:

Enabled — a toggle that turns the OOO reply prompt on or off entirely. When off, no prompts fire and the Leave Types row below is hidden. When on (the default), Vacation Tracker watches your approved leaves and fires the 2-day-out reminder for any leave whose type is in the list below.

Leave Types — a multi-select chip list. By default it's pre-populated with every active leave type on your Location. Each chip has an × on its right side; click it to remove that type from the OOO list. To add a type back, click into the empty space inside the field and pick from the dropdown of available leave types.

  1. Make your edits — remove leave types you don't want OOO prompts for, add any back that you do want.
  2. Click Save. The setting is per-User, so your edit only affects your own OOO prompts.

How the List Affects Behavior

  • Type is in the list: when one of your approved leaves on that type starts in 2 days, Vacation Tracker prompts you to set up an OOO reply message.
  • Type is removed from the list: no prompt fires for that type, even if the leave is approved and upcoming.
  • Toggle is off entirely: no prompts at all, regardless of leave type.

Removing a type from the list doesn't affect leave tracking, balances, calendar events, or the Slack Status Update mapping — just the OOO prompt for that type. Everything else continues to work normally.

Common Questions

Just you. The Configure Automatic OOO Reply section lives on the Account Settings page (Account Settings tab), so each User configures it for themselves. There's no workspace-wide setting an Admin can use to bulk-edit OOO leave-type lists or turn OOO on/off for other Users — every part of OOO setup is per-User by design, because it requires the User to grant their email provider permissions (Gmail / Outlook) themselves. See Can a Vacation Tracker Admin or Approver Turn On/Off the OOO Feature?

OOO prompts fire for every active leave type on your Location. So a fresh User will get the 2-day-out OOO setup prompt for Vacation, Sick Day, Maternity, Personal Day, Working from Home, and any other type their Location has enabled. Trimming the list is the way to cut down on prompts you don't need.

No. This list only affects the OOO autoreply prompt. The leave still hits your balance, appears on the team calendar, fires the standard approval flow, sets your Slack status (if mapped), and shows up in reports — exactly like a leave on a type that's in the OOO list. Removing a type only suppresses the OOO setup nudge.

What's Next?

Guide: Automatic Out of Office (OOO) Reply (Autoreply) Can a Vacation Tracker Admin or Approver Turn On/Off the OOO Feature? How Can I Create and Configure Leave Types?
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