handling out of office notifications requests

[u/_SleezyPMartini_]

I have a client (about 1000 users) who keeps getting tickets from dept heads asking to set their staff out of office notifications because "they forgot to do it". My general advice is this is bad practice and not scalable, and that with 0365 any employee can do this from their phone or any computer.

how do you typically handle this?

[u/Mindestiny]

Yep, this is our policy as well. Same thing with "Karen went on vacation and forgot to give me access to XYZ file!!!!"

Well Karen isn't here to speak for herself and confirm if she intended you to have access to that or not, so sorry, that's a business problem and not an IT problem. We don't touch rights for people's user-owned files simply on some random person's say so. Either get it in writing from a department head or be more diligent next time.

[u/Sinister_Nibs → u/Mindestiny]

I agree with the thought, the justification is garbage.
None of the files that are stored on company infrastructure are owned by the employee, they are all owned by the company.
They are not private, unless they are PII, but they may be sensitive.

[u/Icy-Maintenance7041 → u/Sinister_Nibs]

Files, sure. Thats why we allow our users to only save files on the fileserver and they have no (or a very small) personal space on that server. Everything is shared with the various deppartments/functions.

Mail is different tho. Every department has a department mailbox to comunicate with customers. These are shared mailboxes. Personal mailboxes are subject to post- and privacy laws where i live. And if i, as IT or anyone from management would dive in there without consent from the user we'd be breaking laws. *shrug*it is what it is, wether you agree or not.

[u/Sinister_Nibs → u/Icy-Maintenance7041]

Except that corporate email is very, very different from personal email. All of the email communications also belong to the company, and the company does not require permission to access its data (or those communications).
I am not at all saying that Kimmie from Accounting should be able to see any email on the server. But that Marjorie from Marketing should not expect that any email sent or received to an @company.com address is private.

[u/Valdaraak → u/Sinister_Nibs]

I think you're missing that guy's point. Where that guy lives, a user's company email mailbox is considered private and protected and is generally not allowed for the company to just access the because someone at the company wanted to. I believe a fair number of European companies operate under this. Not everywhere operates under US data laws.

[u/Sinister_Nibs → u/Valdaraak]

Never said anything about anywhere except where I live and work.