Any way to set 'out of office' when away from SL for extended periods

Is there anyway that people IM'ing in world can be informed that the reciever is unavailable for a extended period, rather than just 'User is Offline'.

If I'm online, I can set Busy then add my own text to the automatic reply.

If I'm offline, the sender just gets told I'm offline.


I want to be able to set an automatic reply like 'Thanks for the IM, I'll be offline until the 1st October, I will reply to your messeage when I return'.

This also implies that IM's are delivered (unlike setting Busy which I believe just blocks all IM's and responds to the sender automatically).


The only way I see this done at the moment is to set the message in your Profile, but of course not eveyone will check someones profile when they IM them.



On a related note, since IM's are capped, I guess there's no way to inform the sender that the recievers inbox is full and thier message wasn't recieved.


Thanks for the great work Torley, it is appreciated

Good day to you, Partington!

There is a way to do this; a bit of a cumbersome process, but it works:

(1) In Preferences > IM > turn on "Send IM to Email"
(2) In your email program, set up an autoresponder, perhaps the same used for your other email. Some programs will let you filter more finely.
(3) Test it by asking a friend to send a message to you while offline, or you can try it from an alt account if you have one. You should see the message come back shortly after the "User not offline".

"Send IM to Email" also lets you get IM-to-emails over the cap. (I personally don't like getting offline IMs because so many lack essential details and the formatting is difficult to parse through, e.g., all Subject lines are "Message From Second Life". I encourage sending full-fledged email instead so I can sort and respond accordingly.)

We do also want to improve the IM system--many pieces of it to work on, no question about that, and more status messages would be nice too.

And you are ultra-welcome, Partington, thanx for saying so!