PMO | How to Prepare for the Time Off

Before traveling or taking a leave of absence, please prepare for the time off by completing the following suggested steps:

1. Give notice in advance to coworkers and managers. Tell them your plan so they can plan to support you as needed. If you plan to leave for more than 2 weeks, please give a heads-up at least one month ahead. 
2. Set up calendar events. The first event can be an "All day" event on a personal calendar, blocking the time with time set to be "Busy." so that others will not invite you to meetings during your absence. The second event can be another "All day" event informing primary contacts of the absence. The event time can be set to "Free" so it doesn't block the calendar time when others accept the invite. The third event can be an "All day" event on an organization calendar for an update to a broader audience. We can set the event time to be "Free." 
3. Delegate the current tasks and the hosted meetings to another person if the leave is longer than two days. If necessary, create a knowledge transfer document to outline the delegation details, including the jobs, meetings, and contacts. Select a project team member to host your meetings and send meeting minutes following the PMO guidelines. 
4. Delegate the approval authority and arrange contacts covering different function areas. 
5. Create an out-of-office auto-email reply. Be careful to avoid setting server-side rules. Instead, use the company-recommended application to prevent duplicate auto-replies. Otherwise, the auto-reply could flood other people's inboxes. 
6. Set your online application status, e.g., update the online status, such as showing out-of-office (OOO) in Slack with the /Status command. 

With these settings, we can ensure everything is handled before our leave. ​​