🏖️ When Jira Learns to Respect Vacations

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Teams using Jira often work across time zones and locations. Vacations and planned absences are usually tracked in Microsoft Outlook, but Jira assignments don’t automatically take that information into account.

This leads to a familiar situation:

• Issues are assigned to people who are out of office
• Tasks wait for responses that won’t come
• Teammates don’t know why work is blocked

To avoid this, out-of-office information from Microsoft can be synced into Jira and used for assignment logic and automation.

How Out-of-Office Handling Can Work in Jira

With Out of Office Sync for Jira and Microsoft, out-of-office data from Microsoft is synced into Jira.

What the app does:

• Automatic out-of-office detection on assignment
  When a user is newly assigned to an issue or added as a request participant, Jira can detect whether that user is out of office and react accordingly.
• Out-of-office data available for automation rules
  Project admins can use the out-of-office custom field in Jira automation to define how assignments should be handled when someone is unavailable.

Based on these automation rules, different actions are possible. 

1. Prevent Assignments to Unavailable Users

If someone tries to assign an issue to a user who is marked as out of office, Jira blocks the assignment.

• The issue stays unassigned 
• The person making the assignment is notified 
• No work is left waiting with an unavailable assignee 

This avoids follow-ups, later reassignment, and unnecessary delays.

2. Reassign Issues Automatically and Notify the Team

Instead of leaving the issue unassigned, automation rules can reassign it to:

• Another specific user, or
• A member of a defined group

A comment can be added automatically, for example:

“This issue was reassigned because the original assignee is out of office.”

This keeps the reason clear and reduces back-and-forth.

3. Handle Longer Absences Based on Return Date

For longer absences, automation rules can also use the expected return date.

If the user won’t be back soon:

• The issue is reassigned automatically
• A comment explains why the reassignment happened

This ensures work continues instead of waiting for someone to return from leave.

Learn more about these examples here!

What Changes for the Team

Using out-of-office data in Jira workflows helps teams avoid common assignment issues:

• No issues stuck with unavailable users
• Clear context through automatic comments
• Less manual reassignment and fewer follow-ups
• Planned absences are handled without extra coordination

Jira keeps work moving - even when people are away.

Because “they’re on vacation” shouldn’t be something you find out three days later.

How does your team currently handle Jira assignments when someone is out of office?

• Do you rely on manual checks?
• Do you use automation rules?
• Or is this still an open challenge?

Feel free to share your setup, questions, or lessons learned - curious to hear how others in the Atlassian Community approach this.

Looking forward to your comments :)