Space Admin Quick Reference Guide
In Out of Office Assistant the role described here is called Space Admin. It lets you manage Out of Office rules for the people in the spaces you administer, without giving you Jira administrator rights. Jira renamed projects to spaces and the app follows that naming: the permissions screen grants Space Admins, and a rule's scope column reads Space/JQL.
What a Space Admin can do
See the availability of every user who can be assigned work in the spaces you administer, on the Team Availability tab.
Create, edit and delete Out of Office rules for those people, including their coverers, auto-reply message and reassignment scope.
Create and change personal templates for them, within the same spaces.
Your scope stops there. Jira admins and Out of Office admins see and manage every user on the site; you see only the spaces you were granted. App settings, global integrations and REST API access stay with those two roles. Someone with no app role at all can see another person's Out of Office data only where the two of them share a space.
Two grants are required
Both of the following are required, and neither works on its own.
In the app. A Jira admin or an Out of Office admin opens App Settings > Permissions and selects your spaces under Space Admins. The screen states the effect: "Space Admins of the selected spaces can create and manage Out of Office rules for members within those spaces."
In Jira. You need space administrator rights in that same space, granted under Space settings > Access. Being the space owner is not enough.
The Space Admins picker names specific spaces. There is no option that covers all spaces, so every space a delegate should look after has to be selected individually. Sites upgraded from the Connect version are prompted in App Settings > Permissions to select their spaces again.
If you can open the app but cannot act on a colleague, check both grants - a missing second grant looks exactly like a missing first one.
Everyday tasks
In Jira, open Apps in the sidebar and select Out of Office Assistant. All of these start on Team Availability, the tab the app opens on.
See who is away. Narrow the list with the search box and the All spaces, All users and Integration filters, then read the Status column. It shows AVAILABLE, LEAVING SOON or OUT OF OFFICE, with Active Rules, Out of Office Period and Coverers beside it.
Open one person. Select Show details in the Actions column. Their page has its own Rules, Templates and Integrations tabs, and lists Current rules and Expired rules in separate tables. Back to users returns you to the list.
Work on their rules. Their Rules tab mirrors your own My Rules tab, down to its header actions: Reload, Change priority and an add-rule action that reads Add rule for this user on someone else's record. Existing rules are changed from the row Actions button, which holds Edit, Delete, Bulk assign and one pause entry that follows the rule's status: Pause on an active rule, Resume on a paused one. On a rule an integration created, all four are greyed out.
Hand over open work. The same Actions menu carries Bulk assign, which either assigns the listed work items to the rule's coverers or adds those coverers as watchers.
A warning triangle beside a rule's Space/JQL value means that rule overlaps or is shadowed by another one.
Related pages
Permissions and Access Requirements - every role in the app, and what each one is granted where.
Restricting Out of Office to Specific Spaces - keeping rules inside a set of spaces.
Bulk Assign - the handover dialog in full.
Rule Priority and Conflict Resolution - which rule acts when two overlap.