Out Of Office Assistant

[Vorlon8]

I use Outlook 2007 - Does anyone know if the following Major shortcoming
being addressed in Outlook 2010?
I find it incredible that with so many versions of office having been
released that the Out Of Office Assistant is not directly linked to the
appointments in the Calendar and that you can't specify each seperate
appointment with its own unique OOOA message and timing scheme.
For example, If I have a meeting 10-11pm, I want to be able to configure
OOOA for that meeting to come on 5 mins before the meeting starts, and
specifiy the message that people will receive while it is in effect, and then
the OOOA to go off when I acknowledge a prompt that asks me if I am back at
my desk.
In addition to the OOOA being set for this meeting, I also then want to
configure a different set of settings for OOOA for the next meeting and then
next after that, etc as soon as I enter the appointment into Outlook... it
should be possible to configure 1-1000 OOOAs if need be, one for every
appointment entered. You can configure times, dates, locations, reminders etc
per appointment, Why not the OOOA?
Why is it not linked, Why is it a one off option and why is it not automatic
on/off.

I really hope someone can give me a positive answer on this. It must be a
nightmare for sales reps and those on the road a lot.

 

[Vince Averello]

I think it's because the OOA is generally for when you're 'out of the
office' as in, not available for work. It's not to tell people you're in a
meeting at the moment. That's usually relegated to instant messaging program
status messages.

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

Why is it not linked, Why is it a one off option and why is it not automatic
on/off.

Outlook 2007 (and, I imagine, Outlook 2010) with Exchange 2007 allow an
appointment to turn on the OOA automatically, but not any of the rest of what
you describe. Outlook 2010 doesn't either. You'd have to ask the designers
for the reasons why.

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

Outlook 2007/2010 with Exchange 2007/2010 allow you to set oof to turn on
and off at a specific time. That is the extent of the improvements.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]

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