Winter is fast approaching and lots of you will be heading out of the office to spend some much needed time with your families. But before you jet off to a tropical locale to escape the winter blues, there are a couple things you should take care of on your Google Apps account.

You will not only need to make sure everyone in your organization knows you are on vacation, but you will also need to make sure none of your external contacts are left hanging without explanation. And what about people who still need things from you? It is possible to unplug for a few days without becoming a bottleneck. We cover all this and more with our collection of four things you should set up in Google Apps before you submit your PTO request.

1. An Out of Office Calendar Will Let Everyone At Your Organization Know You Will Be Absent

An out of office calendar is visible to everyone and is an easy way for employees to let everyone know when they are unavailable for days at a time. With Google Calendar’s sharing functionality, setting this up is quick and can save you the hassle of tracking down which employees are away.

2. Set Up an Autoresponder To Explain Why You Aren’t Responding to Emails

Your coworkers aren’t the only ones who need to know you are out of the office. Anyone who emails you on a regular basis will start to think you are rude when their messages don’t get a response. That is why it is vital to set up a personalized vacation responder in Gmail to let them know where you are, when you will be back, and who to contact if something is urgent.

3. If You Need Someone To Manage Your Inbox While You Are Gone, Delegate Access

You should never give out your Gmail password to anyone. But sometimes you need someone to check something in your inbox while you are away. This is where email delegation comes in. Email delegation allows access to a user’s inbox without the exchange of passwords, and the access can be revoked when you get back to work.

4. Make Sure Your Colleagues Can Still Find Your Shared Documents With This Neat Trick

Are there documents you own that others need to access when you are away? If you don’t want to respond to numerous emails asking where to find said documents between sips of your holiday eggnog, then you may want to set one of these up. With this workaround, collaborators can actually get the document they are looking for simply by emailing a document distributing alias you created. It’s like something right out of the Jetsons!