Going to be out of the office for a few days? You can set an "away" message for your University email account using the Set Email Forwarding and Autoreply found in the "Manage Your Email" section of My Account.
U of M Google account users will need to use Google's auto-reply, forwarding and mail filters features available in Gmail. The existing central functions are not available to Google users. To configure an out-of-office auto-reply, use the "Vacation Responder" feature in Gmail. Instructions are on Google's Setting an Automatic Vacation Response.