How to Stop Out-of-Office Replies from Flooding Your Service Boards

by | Aug 29, 2025 | ConnectWise

Skeleton slumped over laptop with S.O.S. note, symbolizing being overwhelmed by out-of-office reply chaos.

If you’ve ever run a ConnectWise (or any PSA) service board, you’ve probably seen it:
a flood of automatic “Out of Office” replies spamming tickets, creating duplicates, or—worse—reopening closed tickets.

It’s frustrating for techs, confusing for clients, and messy for reporting.

The good news? You can tame this with a few smart mailbox rules.

At Pivotal Crew, we use three simple but powerful rules in our shared mailboxes to keep OOO chaos under control. Here’s how we do it:

1. Delete OOO Replies from Internal Staff

Why:
When an internal team member’s auto-reply hits the system, it can generate a ticket update that then goes back out to the client. This creates unnecessary noise for everyone.

How we set it up:

  • Condition: Subject includes Out of Office or Automatic Reply:

  • Condition: Sender address includes your own domain (e.g., @pivotalcrew.com)

  • Action: Delete

This prevents clients from getting ticket updates triggered by your own staff’s OOO replies.

2. Delete OOO Replies for Non-Ticket Emails

Why:
Not every OOO message includes the original subject line, which means the system can treat it like a new ticket. In the worst case, this can cause an endless loop of ticket creation.
It also helps when sending mass communications (like announcements) from a connector mailbox, where dozens of OOO replies could otherwise turn into dozens of unwanted tickets.

How we set it up:

  • Condition: Subject includes Out of Office or Automatic Reply:

  • Action: Delete

  • Exception: Subject includes Ticket

This way, you only keep OOO replies tied to active ticket threads.

3. Delete OOO Replies for Closed Tickets

Why:
Nothing’s worse than a closed ticket reopening because of a client’s auto-responder.

How we set it up:

  • Condition: Subject includes Out of Office or Automatic Reply:

  • Condition: Subject or body includes your closure text (for us: How did we do?)

  • Action: Delete

This prevents OOO messages from reviving closed tickets.

What About Open Tickets?

Here’s the nuance: we do allow OOO messages to come through if they’re tied to open tickets.
Why? Because knowing a client is out gives us context for when to follow up and helps set expectations with the team.

That’s the balance—you want to filter out the noise without losing useful visibility.

Final Thoughts

With just three mailbox rules, you can stop OOO replies from:

  • Creating unnecessary tickets

  • Updating tickets with irrelevant chatter

  • Reopening tickets that should stay closed

Meanwhile, you still keep visibility into customer availability on active tickets.

Small tweak, big payoff.

👉 Pro tip: Document these rules as part of your service board hygiene SOPs so they don’t get lost during mailbox changes or staff turnover.