# Can the auto-responder fire on @mentions?

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-the-auto-responder-fire-on-mentions/308524
**Category:** Support
**Tags:** automation
**Created:** [May 17, 2024, 2:32pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-the-auto-responder-fire-on-mentions/308524 "2024-05-17T14:32:42Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![BryanV](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/bryanv/32/226479_2.png) [@BryanV](https://meta.discourse.org/u/BryanV)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2024, 2:32pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-the-auto-responder-fire-on-mentions/308524/1 "2024-05-17T14:32:42Z")

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Before I go to effort to install: can the key be an `@mention`? I’m one of the primary responders on an OSS support forum and since users know this sometimes they try to ping me directly. But I’m about to take a sabbatical and be absent for awhile.

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### Author: ![JammyDodger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/jammydodger/32/254611_2.png) [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2024, 10:01am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-the-auto-responder-fire-on-mentions/308524/5 "2024-05-18T10:01:17Z")

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I’m not having much luck getting it to fire on @mentions, though it does seem okay with plain usernames. I think that might lead to some unnecessary ones though. But even with @mentions it could just start replying when you didn’t intend it to (eg. ‘@BryanV gave some good advice in this topic…’ → ‘Hello, I’m on sabbatical…’)

I was wondering if another feature might make it clearer you’re not available? I think the holiday calendar feature of the [Calendar (and Event) Plugin](https://meta.discourse.org/t/official-discourse-calendar-and-event-plugin/97376) could be useful to apply some notes and emojis to your username wherever they appear, including in the composer when someone starts to write an @mention to you. This would let people know before rather than after posting (and avoid some auto-reply noise).

There’s also the User Status (`enable user status`) if installing a plugin was out of the running. You can also be more specific about your reason for not being available:

 ![@mention autocomplete user status](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/2/4/5/245c3f1ac3724d3e63db469e401d4f95b04ba371.png)

You can’t restrict its use to only certain groups, but you can hide the UI from non-staff with something like this in a theme component:

```css
.set-user-status {
    display: none;
}

.staff{
    .set-user-status {
    display: initial;
 }
}

```