New out of office visibility in Gmail

September 16, 2019

Google has announced a new feature for out of office visibility in Gmail. Now, when you have an out of office event on your Google Calendar, a notice of that out of office status will appear in Gmail when an individual tries to contact you via email. Also, while you’re writing an email, Google will display a banner in the email compose window stating that the recipient is out of office and when they expect to be back.

These notices will automatically start showing up when anyone whose calendar you have access to has an out of office event scheduled.

Caution: Do not use Gmail’s native out of office message feature. This feature is not compatible with MCommunity groups.

If you’d like to disable sharing of your calendar availability to other G Suite apps, you can do so in Google Calendar by following these steps:

  • From your calendar, click the gear icon in the top right to access your Calendar settings and select Settings
  • Under Settings for my calendars in the left sidebar, select the calendar you wish to disable sharing on
  • Next, select Access permissions and uncheck Show calendar info in other Google apps, limited by access permissions.

According to Google, this feature should begin showing up in U-M Google on September 16 and could take up to 3 days to become fully visible.