If a person has forgotten to set up an “Out of Office” message in their Gmail, You as a Google Workspace Admin can set up that for them.
GAT Flow allows admins to set up an Auto-reply message to any user of the domain. This auto-reply can be set up as Out of Office message.
An Admin can set it up in 2 ways:
- Via workflow through Set up auto reply action
- Directly from the Users module in GAT Flow (only accessible by Admins)
Set up auto-reply via workflow in GAT Flow #
From GAT+ (1) click and open Flow (2)
Create workflow #
Navigate to Flow > Create workflow
Under Define Workflow Type, fill in the fields required.
- Workflow name – enter the name for the workflow
- Type – Modify – modify and update existing users of the domain
- Workflow description – explanation of what the workflow will do (optional)
- Run immediately after approval
- Next – click on the button to proceed
Search for a Users #
In Search for a user (1)- select what users to be affected by this workflow (2)
- Search for a User – select individual users
- Search for a Group – select a group of users
- Search for an Org. Unit – select Org. Unit of users
- Classroom
- Import users – import used via Google spreadsheet
Check the list of selected users under the Current selected users section (3), and click Next (4) to move on to the next step.
Choose Actions #
Under the Choose Actions section (1), click on the + button (2) and Add action (3). A pop-up menu with all the available actions will be displayed.
From all available actions, search for (1) and select Set up auto reply (2) action.
The selected action will be added to the node section. Double-click on the action node to open the action’s configuration section. To sstart configuring it enable it first:
Fill in the required fields
- Enable – enable the auto-reply
- Restrict to contacts – restrict messages only to users under the contacts list of the chosen user
- Restrict to the domain – restrict messages only to users from the domain
- Subject – enter the subject for the email
- Content – enter content for the email
- Variables are available to be used
- {{ name }}, {{ email }}, {{ manager }} and so on.
- Variables are available to be used
- HTML Editor – you can switch and use an HTML editor too
- Show preview – to check how the message will look like on a real user’s example
Click on Send approval request to proceed
Once finished, click anywhere outside the action node to close it and select Send Approval Request to the Security Officer for review.
After selecting Send Approval Request (1), a confirmation message will appear. Confirm to continue (2).
The workflow will be submitted for approval to the Security Officer.
Result #
The workflow will be sent to the Security officer for Approval.
After clicking the link in the email, they will be redirected to the approval section of the relevant workflow in Flow (1), where they can review the request and approve (2) or deny it (3).
When the request is Approved the Out of Office message will be set up and visible in the Workflow tab
The account where Auto-reply is set up – will have this message on the top of their Gmail (subject: Out of office) set up in Flow.
And in the Gmail (1) Settings (under the General > Out-of-Office Auto Reply:
An Out of Office auto-reply will be sent in return to the Sender:
And the email itself will contain the content set up in Flow
Set up auto-reply directly from Users module in GAT Flow #
As an Admin, navigate the Flow (1) > Domain (2) > Users module (3), and search for the user in question (4) to set up an auto-reply (5-6).
Next, go to Email tab and its Auto-reply sub-tab where you can enable it and configure the message that is going to be sent.
Once all is set up, Update the changes.
This feature set up under Users module is directly available to Google Workspace Administrators and does not require the approval of a Security Officer.
