Out of office display when replying to or mentioning a user in a Google Docs comment
When you are writing a comment in Google Docs and tagging someone on an action item, Google will now automatically alert you if they are out-of-office. You’ll see the OOO(Out of Office) banner and information on when they plan to return so you don’t try to bother or bug them before they get back to work. With this, we are going to have better expectations on others' availability and capacity to work and collaborate with us and even re-assign the action item to another person or team member who may be available and better placed to work on the action item.
For multi-person threads, you’ll see condensed out of office information. You can select the info icon to view more information on each specific person. This feature will be available to all G Suite and Google Workspace users from February 15th, 2021.
To add a comment or an action item in Google Docs to another user simply highlight the section and click on the Add comment icon on your right.
And proceed to enter the comment and the user's email address in the comment section and click on Assign. If the user has enabled an Out of Office response for their account you will see the out of office banner, the user will be notified by email of the comment.