How to handle being out of office

Front makes it easy to handle being out of office. You can set your own availability, as well as a teammate's. 

When a teammate is set to unavailable, any responses they receive that originated in a shared inbox will cause that thread to become unassigned and returned to that shared inbox. This helps other teammates respond to the thread in a more timely manner. 

Any shared inbox threads previously assigned to a teammate that do not receive new messages after the teammate sets themself to unavailable will be unaffected. That teammate will need to reassign those before her departure, or the other teammates can view her assignments themselves and decide what to do with them.

Step 1

Click your avatar at the top right corner of Front.

Step 2

Change your status to unavailable by selecting on Out of office. When you're unavailable, the dot by your avatar will change color, so that your team knows you are unavailable.

While you are out of office, if your client replies to a message that originated in a shared inbox, the conversation will automatically get unassigned and a teammate can pick up where you left off. 

See this article to learn more about availability statuses.

Step 3 (optional)

Your individual inbox is unaffected when you set yourself to unavailable. It is recommended that you also set time off.

If a teammate is out of office, an admin can adjust their availability for them.

Step 1

Click the gear icon on the top right of Front and into the Company settings tab, then go to the Teammates section.

Step 2

Select a teammate. In the Overview tab, navigate to the Availability setting, then select Out of office.

Step 3

Click Save.

Step 4 (optional)

You can also schedule time off for a teammate by navigating to the Time off tab of their profile in the Teammates section.

Create shift schedules across multiple time zones, and assignment rules will only assign to available teammates on the current shift. Conversations won’t be missed when shifts change, and analytics are more precise based on each teammate’s local shift hours. Learn more here. 

Out of office and time off settings are available on all plans.

The shifts feature is available on the Scale plan or above. Some legacy plans may also have this feature.