How to handle being out of the 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, then click the bell icon.

Step 2

Change your status to unavailable by toggling on Out of Office. When you're unavailable, the bell will turn red, as will the dot by your avatar, 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. 

Step 3 (Optional)

Your individual inbox is unaffected by setting yourself to unavailable. It is recommended that you also create a vacation responder.

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 section, scroll to Teammate is available, and toggle off if teammate is out of office.

Step 3

Click Save.

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 settings and vacation responders are available on all plans.

The Shifts feature is available on the Scale plan or above. Some legacy plans with different names may also have this feature.