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Inclusive communication means sharing information in a way that everybody can understand. 

As part of our commitment to inclusivity and our core work orders, we encourage staff to make sure all their communication is inclusive. Please find some useful guides and information below.

Important information and reading
How to guides
 Set up an Out of Office in Gmail and Calendar

Out of office allows a user to set a standard automated reply email to be sent during specified dates. It is an important tool to let customers know that you are absent or unavailable and is also important in the context of handling Freedom of Information requests. From the time a request arrives, the University has a set period of time to respond. However, where an out of office reply provides an alternate point of contact for such requests and asks applicants to re-submit requests to this, the request will not be counted as received during your absence.

Set up an Out of Office reply in Gmail

  1. Click the gear icon in the upper right of the Google mail window and choose Settings
  2. Under the General subheading, scroll down to Out of Office Autoreply
  3. Select the radio button Out of Office AutoReply on
  4. Set First day date and Last day date (optional)
  5. Compose an email subject line e.g. “Out of Office”
  6. Compose a Message. This should include an expected date of return and/or alternative point of contact in your absence
  1. g ‘I am out of the office until xxxxx and will attend to your email as soon as possible on my return. If your email is urgent please contact xxxxx’
  1. To send an Autoreply to all senders leave the following tick boxes unselected. Alternatively, if you would limit who will receive your receive your out of office reply, select the optional tick boxes for Only send a response to people in my contacts and/or Only send a response to people in University of York. 
  2. Click Save Changes.
  3. A banner will appear at the top of your inbox to indicate that the Out of Office is enabled (n.b. The banner will only appear on your selected first day as per number 4.)


Set up an Out of Office reply in Calendar

Out of office is also available in Calendar and allows you to automatically decline events and meeting invitations during the dates and times that you are unavailable.

Enable working hours in Calendar Settings to let people know when you might be available for a meeting.  This will warn people if they try to invite you to a meeting outside of your preferred times. Here is a guide to enabling working hours in your Google Calendar.

  1. Select a white space in your Calendar 
  2. Select Out of office
  3. Set your start and end dates and times
  4. If preferred, you can edit the default message which is Declined because I am out of office
  5. Select who can see this Out of Office booking in your calendar (Public, Private or Default Visibility)
  6. If set to Public, anyone at the University emailing you will receive a pop-up when composing the email saying you are out of office and when you will return.
 Schedule emails in Google Mail

In order to promote a healthy work-life balance, the Department of Environment & Geography encourage staff to avoid sending emails outside of standard working hours (8am - 6pm, Monday - Friday). Google Mail Schedule is a tool which now offers an inbuilt solution to write an email at a time that is convenient to you and schedule it to automatically send later. 

Google Schedule is covered by our University’s data sharing agreement with Google and should be used instead of any third party mail scheduling apps which might currently be in use (e.g. Boomerang) and which aren’t compliant with the University’s Data Protection policy.  


How to access Schedule send in Google Mail

  1. When drafting an original email or reply in Gmail, you’ll now see an arrow next to the Send button.
  2. Clicking this arrow now gives you the option Schedule send.
  3. After clicking Schedule send, you can pick the specific date & time you’d like the message to be delivered.


Schedule folder

You will also notice a Scheduled” folder in Gmail. Scheduled messages will appear in the Scheduled folder while queued to be sent.

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