Out of office message

Students, employees and persons from outside the University can set up an Out of office message for their e-mail account. Even if your Out of office message is active, e-mails will still be delivered to your mailbox. The footnote of the Out of office message points this out by default

 Direct Link

Form Managing Out of office message

Activating Out of office messages

Log in to Managing out of office message using your u:account UserID and password.

  1. Specify the period during which Out of office messages are to be sent (first and last day).
  2. Enter the text for the Out of office message. If the string $DateEnd$ appears in the text, it will be automatically replaced by the last date of your absence when the out-of-office message is sent.
  3. Click Test-E-Mail schicken (send test e-mail) to receive a template message.
  4. Click Aktivieren (activate). The service is active immediately. You will see a preview of the out of office message again.

The service will only send one notification per week per sender. This week starts as soon as the first out of office reply is sent. 

 Note

Please use the prepared texts in German, English or in both languages.

Exchange e-mail address

Employees

To set up an Out of office reply for an Exchange e-mail address, please use the relevant function of your Exchange client or the Outlook Web App (OWA).

Deactivating Out of office messages

After the date specified as Letzter Tag (last day), the Out of office reply will be deactivated automatically.

If you would like to deactivate the Out of office reply before that date, please log-in to Managing Out of office messages and click deactivate. You will only be able to see this button, if an Out of office reply is currently activated. 

Who receives an Out of office message?

Out of office messages are sent to the address indicated in the return path of the e-mail addressed to you. As a rule, this is the sender’s address. However, in some cases it may be a different address (e.g. in case of a wrong configuration of the sender’s e-mail programme). 

In some cases, no automatic out-of-office reply is sent:

  • If the e-mail was not sent directly to your University of Vienna e-mail address.
  • If the return path begins with owner- or ends on -request, -relay or -owner. This prevents out of office messages from being sent to mailing lists.
  • If the sender’s address is postmaster, uucp, mailer-daemon or mailer.
  • If the message is marked as bulk mail by a precedence header: bulk, junk or list.
  • If the message is marked as automatically generated by an AutoSubmitted header.