Out of Office Assistant - Outlook 2007 - JAWS V15

Setting the Out of Office Assistant in Outlook 2007

As it is half term week it feels like it's the right time to recap on how to set up, switch on and switch off the Out of Office Assistant in Outlook. In this post I'm going to be using Outlook 2007 and making sense of it with my trusty JAWS V15.

The "Out of Office Assistant" is one of these operations that, in earlier versions of the application, I always found to be pretty straightforward but, with Outlook 2007 and 2010 for that matter, I've found it a bit of a trickier process. I don't know if things have changed again in the most recent Outlook 2013 but since the 2007 move to a multi-tab page layout, I've just found it naturally less intuitive than I used to. Anyway, I'm going to go through the way I have it figured out and this works for me so I hope that it gives you some ideas of how to tackle the layout.

Configuring the Out of Office Assistant

1. Open Outlook 2007 and ensure that you have focus in the Inbox.
2. Press ALT T to open the main Tools menu.
3. Press the DOWN ARROW to move to the Out of Office Assistant menu item and press ENTER to activate it. You can also tap the U key to launch it directly instead of using the ARROW keys.

4. Focus moves to the Out of Office dialog box, specifically the two radio buttons at the top. One of these options, labelled "Do not send out of office replies" is already checked. From there tap the DOWN ARROW to select the other radio button, labelled "Send out of office auto-replies". Each of these radio buttons has a dedicated hotkey that you can use to activate the relevant radio button from anywhere in the dialog box, these keys are as follows:
• Do Not Send Out of Office Replies: ALT N
• Send Out of Office Auto-Replies: ALT S
5. When you select the "Send Out of Office Auto-Replies" radio button, previously unavailable form fields now become active. Press TAB to move to the Only Send During This Time Range: checkbox and check or uncheck this using the SPACEBAR. If you activate this option, you will have the opportunity to set some extra date and time information in several text input fields that you can TAB through next. Personally, I never use this but you might feel differently and I can see how, in some circumstances, it could be beneficial to set a time period within which the system generated messages are sent. If you do want to experiment with this, make sure you press TAB to move through the Start Date, Start Time, End Date and End Time edit fields in order and complete as necessary. Type the required information in using the following format:
• Date Format: DD/MM/YYYY (Example: 14/02/2015)
• Time Format: HH:MM (Example: 14:30)

Now we get to the twist in the plot! When you press TAB at this point you will have focus on an unlabelled button, another TAB takes you from there to an unlabelled edit field. If you continue to TAB you will reach a Menu Bar with some formatting options in it and you can TAB through that to get to the text area for you to input your actual message. Apart from the obvious labelling issues I also personally feel, from a speech point of view anyway, that using the TAB key to plough on doesn't serve me well. It also glosses over what is an important point about this dialog box: there is a large multi-tab area to explore that contains two distinct pages. The first page contains all of the auto-message options for people emailing from inside the organisation. The second page contains the auto-message options for people emailing you from outside your organisation.

6. So, from the Only Send During This Time Range: checkbox instead of instinctively pressing TAB - press SHIFT TAB five times to go back round, past the Cancel and OK buttons until you have focus on the Inside My Organisation tab - when you hear this you are now on the page heading tabs. At this point you can switch between the pages simply by using the RIGHT and LEFT ARROW KEYS.

Inside My Organisation: Setting the Out of Office Assistant

1. With focus now on the Inside My Organisation page tab, press SHIFT TAB once more to move to the associated text edit field. This is where you now type in your message that you wish to be sent automatically to people (within your organisation) who email you while you are out.
2. Press TAB to return focus to the Inside My Organisation page tab and press the RIGHT ARROW to put focus on the second page, labelled Outside My Organisation (On).

Outside My Organisation (On): Setting the Out of Office Assistant

1. With focus now on the Outside My Organisation (On) page tab, press SHIFT TAB to move to the text edit field as before and type in the message that will be automatically sent to people who are emailing you from outside your organisation.
2. Alternatively, you do have the option with the external facing email to actually turn this auto-message function off completely. If you want to do this, the quickest way is to use the keystroke of ALT U as this moves the cursor to the Auto-reply to people outside my organisation checkbox. Control the state of the checkbox as normal, using the SPACEBAR. When you disable this feature, the rest of the form will be made unavailable as it no longer applies and the label for the page will indicate Outside My Organisation (OFF) instead of Outside My Organisation (ON).
3. As well as turning the external email on and off you can fine-tune the function so that it only sends an automatic email to external senders who are in your Contact List, as opposed to everyone who emails. Once again, the best route here is to use the direct keystrokes for each option, these are:
• My Contacts only: ALT C
• Anyone outside my organisation: ALT A - (this being the default option in the series of two radio buttons.)
4. When you have input your messages and set all of the options, press the TAB key several times to reach the OK button and press the SPACEBAR to confirm everything and run the Out of Office Assistant.

Boo! Back from the Holidays, Turning the Out of Office Assistant Off

1. From the Inbox, press ALT T to open the Tools menu.
2. With the Tools menu open, press the U key to launch the Out of Office dialog box directly or navigate with the DOWN ARROW to the menu item and press ENTER.
3. The Out of Office Assistant dialog box will open, with the cursor focused on the second of the two main radio buttons ("Send out of office replies"). Press the UP ARROW to select the first radio button, labelled Do Not Send Out of Office Auto-replies and press the ENTER key to confirm. NOTE: You can also use direct keystrokes to control the selection between these two radio button options as I outlined earlier on in this post.

And there you have it! It may take a few passes through this dialog box to get the hang of it and you might find that you want to just TAB your way through it - if that works for you then great! For me, when I approached this in the usual manner by just trying to TAB all the way through, I really didn't find it particularly intuitive. But, being able to get to the page tabs quicker using SHIFT TAB gave me more of a context for what I was doing. Throw in a few of the direct keystrokes on top and the Out of Office stuff works okay with speech. And, y'know, it's not exactly the first time the tab order hasn't done me any favours and I am sure it won't be the last. But, let's not go there eh...?

Until next time - have fun!