Method and apparatus for automatically setting “out of office” greetings

A telecommunications apparatus, comprising:

• a presence service;
• a media service;
• and
• a synchronization agent automatically querying said presence service for a current presence state for presence service users, monitoring for presence state changes and configured to selectively perform a synchronization of an outgoing message on said media service responsive to presence state changes, synchronization being selected responsive to changes in said current default outgoing message.

A telecommunications system, comprising:

• a network;
• a plurality of network devices each associated with a network user;
• a first messaging service associated with the network;
• a second messaging service associated with the network;
• and
• a synchronization agent associated with said network and communicating with said first messaging service and said second messaging service over said network, said synchronization agent automatically sending outgoing message queries over said network to said second messaging service, said synchronization agent monitoring response to said queries from said second messaging service for changes in whether a default outgoing message for each network user is set and configured to selectively synchronize corresponding outgoing user messages on said first messaging service with corresponding outgoing user messages on said second messaging service when a respective said default outgoing message is set, other than said default outgoing message being set indicating that the second messaging service has been reset, synchronization being selected responsive to changes in said current default outgoing message.

A telecommunications method, comprising:

• automatically querying each of a plurality of messaging services about changes in an outgoing message and monitoring each for changes in whether a respective default outgoing message is set for each network user, said plurality of messaging services including an e-mail system;
• selectively setting a media server greeting for a respective network user automatically, setting said media server greeting being selected responsive to detection of a change in setting of an e-mail system default message for said respective network user;
• and
• selectively resetting said media server greeting for said respective network user, setting said media server greeting being selected automatically responsive to detection of resetting of said e-mail system default message for said respective network user.