My comment is a suggestion for Microsoft Outlook and I'm sure it is one that
hs been heard before but in the chance it hasn't here goes. I think it would
be a good idea that when you make calendar appointments that there be an
option to turn on a default "out of office" message for that time block. For
instance, I travel locally for IT contract support and I maybe in my office
2-5 hrs a day and out the rest with customers (no blackberry or email relay
either).

This option could be a simple radio button for scheduling new appointments.
Within Outlook under Tools - Options - Email Options there could be a text
box editor where you can enter a "simple" out of office, for instance if you
open a new appoinment for 2pm - 5pm and you know it is offsite and would like
others to be aware of it, you could toggle on a message "Currently out of the
office from [range of time]" and where [range of time] is the Microsoft
programmers could fix it to pull from your scheduled range of time. Also,
after the [range of time] is complete the toggle would switch off, so no more
out of office.

Anyways, just thought of it and thought I'd share. Many people may not want
or would never use something like this, so it would just be a nice little
add-in for those of us who are in and out of the office a lot during the
week.... or maybe if you are in the office you could use it to get people to
stop bugging you!

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http://www.microsoft.com/office/comm....calendari ng