Skip to main content

Get Support
Have a question? Let's get you an answer!

How Do I...? Troubleshooting Code & Webhooks Developer Zone

Other Help Resources
Wait, there's more! Check out these Community sourced spaces for additional resources.

Zapier Help Center Hire an Expert

Learning Resources
All of our best learning resources can be found here.

Featured Articles Show & Tell Zapier's products AI Hub Zapier Tools Hub

Share your knowledge
Give back to the Community by sharing your automation wins and helping to answer questions.

Share your success See unanswered questions User Groups

Other Learning Resources
Some of our favorite additional ways to upskill your Zapier knowledge.

Zapier Learn Zapier Blog Zapier Webinars

Product Updates
Check out what is new and upcoming with Zapier with our regular product updates.

Product Updates

Early Access Program
Want to join Early Access? Learn more here.

Hi! Deb here, from the Zapier blog. Our staff writer Justin recently discovered Google Calendar’s out of office feature. This was the first time in history I knew about an app feature before him. After a mini-celebration, we realized it’s a pretty underutilized feature. Here, Justin talks about how it works and why it’ll save you a lot of grief whenever you’re planning a vacation or just a day off.

Why everyone needs to use Google Calendar's out of office feature

The coolest part (wethinks) is that it connects with Zapier, which means you can use the OOO feature in Google Calendar to create out of office actions in any other app. Automatically update your Slack status, send a text message or email to remind people, or even create a task in a project management app letting people know what they need to cover for you while you’re out.

All you need to do is use the Advanced Mode when setting up your Zap, and use the search term eventType:outOfOffice to only trigger for out of office events.

What other automations might you set up when you’ll be out of the office? (And don’t forget to check out our 5 ways to catch up on work after a vacation.)

That’s a great trigger, but I’m wondering if there’s a way to use this trigger to then send email replies to any email I receive during the time I’m OOO. 

That would be a great way to create an automatic OOO reply. 

We have used this trigger to onboard some customers who want to block time off in Jira whenever they create an Out of Office event in Google Calendar. And it works really well!

What you need is a very simple zap in two steps:

  • The trigger will be the new Google Calendar event. You only have to select the specific calendar. Make sure that it’s a business account, as personal accounts don’t support the ooo tab.
  • The action will be a new absence with Out of Office Assistant for Jira. Here’s where you can add in the EventType: outofOffice as a filter, as seen below. Note that Google Calendar sends it for some reason with a lowercase “o”.

You can also appoint a coverer. That is, a delegate owner for any issues that are assigned to you while you’re missing in action. 

I have searched hard for anything referring to “advanced mode” and cannot find it - please explain what is meant by “create zap in advanced mode”?  

Reply


Terms & Conditions