Google adds an ‘out of office’ feature to Gmail and Hangouts

Google is making things easier for you if you are out of office. If you are a Gsuite member, you can now mark ‘out of office’ on your Google Calendar and that will inform people reaching out to you even before they send an email or ping on Hangouts.

The new feature is available on Gmail and Hangouts. In Gmail and Hangouts, a banner that is positioned right in the compose window or the chat window respectively, will tell the user is out of office. The banner states the recipient is out of office and will back on so and so day and date. The banner comes right after you enter the recipients name on the compose window or if you open their chat.

The new feature is essentially to help you get more uninterrupted time away from work, while for a sender, it will be helpful for them to know the person they’re messaging is not there to reply.

The feature is being rolled out in phases to users. It will first hit instant mails and then come to scheduled emails as well. The feature was first announced at Google’s Cloud Next 2019 conference in April, as part of multiple new features announced for Gsuite users.

Hangouts is still on its death knell though. But Google has pushed the deadline to June 2020. Earlier in 2017, Google had announced it will be breaking Hangouts into two apps — Meet and Chat. Google first said they will be transitioning Gsuite users to the two apps and then the classic Hangouts users will be transitioned. However, later Google backtracked and said that on the basis of feedback from users, the transition will be postponed to June 2020.

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