It's summertime—and while the benefits of a cloud-based system include the ability to stay connected to your business and respond rapidly from anywhere in the world, constant connectivity can also cut into your quality time on the beach. 

Eager to kick back, but worried you'll fall behind? Don't stress. Just follow my 5 easy tips for staying productive while you're on vacation.

1. Set aside 15 minutes each day to triage email

Notice I said "triage," not "read." Triaging email doesn't mean slogging through your inbox and responding to everyone. It's looking for the most critical emails and attending to them. Checking your work email while getting the morning coffee is a great way to see what (if any) action items you need to respond to. 
For Salesforce Admins, this could mean responding to requests to reset passwords or add new users.
For developers, this might be responding to error messages or bugs.

2. Communicate before going on vacation

A "here today, gone tomorrow" approach to vacation can be disruptive to co-workers, particularly those with whom you're working on projects together. Communicate early and often about vacation time to your team. One way to maximize communication is to use the Chatter Announcement feature in groups. This is a great way to keep everyone on the same page while team members are gone. Salesforce Admins and developers can include vacation time in their regular emails to users.

3. Make your out-of-office email actionable

While you're gone, your out-of-office email should be working hard for you. For those who receive it in your absence, it needs to be actionable instead of a dead end. I prefer to use the following template from Chris Brogan:

Subject: Away from ___ until ___ and not checking (or limited access) to email.

"I'm out of the office from __ until __ and won't likely respond until a short while after then. If your matter is urgent, contact this (one) person, otherwise I'll reply to you by __.

4. Add Salesforce1 and SalesforceA to your mobile device

If a response is needed while you are on vacation, the last thing you want to do is trudge up to the hotel and open a laptop. With Salesforce1, you can instantly respond to that Chatter post or update a record to move the opportunity forward. As a Salesforce Admin, you can quickly reset password and freeze or unfreeze users.

5. Check your Chatter Group email settings

Before leaving the office, check your Chatter Group email settings and review their frequency. Setting group digest emails to arrive weekly will free up your inbox and make the daily triage easier. Daily digests, meanwhile, can help you limit your focus to the groups that need your attention.

When vacation time rolls around we can leverage apps like Salesforce1 and SalesforceA to stay in touch without being constantly connected. And by keeping an eye on email we lessen the chance of a big surprise when we return to the office.

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