Record sick leave in Jira without exposing it

The problem

An out-of-office tool that shows “Sick” on a shared calendar discloses health information to everyone who can open it — and one that copies the reason into an automatic reply sends it to anyone who writes in.

Step by step

1. Sensitive types. “Sick leave” ships marked sensitive; mark any other type that should stay private.
2. Team view. For a sensitive type, colleagues see only “Absent”. The real type is shown to the person, their approver and Jira administrators, enforced on the server.
3. Mailbox. The automatic reply, the calendar entry and every e-mail say only that someone is away and until when — for every type, not just sensitive ones.
4. Reason optional. The reason is optional free text, by default visible only to the requester and an authorised approver, and never sent anywhere.
5. Delete when due. Set a retention period, and use “Delete all data of a person” for erasure requests — it also removes what the app wrote to their mailbox.

What to watch out for

The calendar entry’s title is the administrator’s choice (default “Out of office”) — keep it neutral. Imported absences get the type the administrator chose for imports, because mail systems do not say why someone is away.