Helpdesk holiday-closed message as a 20-second avatar video

A support team that closes for Christmas Day (Friday, December 25, 2026, per OPM, read 2026-10-03) can replace a wall of auto-reply text with a 20-second avatar clip that says when support reopens and where self-serve help lives. The clip is one talking-video job of 4 to 60 seconds with inline captions, hosted at a public HTTPS link and linked from the auto-reply, since most helpdesk email does not play inline video. Keep the plain-text version in the message too.

The date is the only outside fact here. Reopening times, emergency contacts and response promises are your team's to decide.

What the message must say

An auto-reply video that skips these gets a second ticket.

Draft with the preview

The preview route renders a short draft of the avatar and voice so you can approve the look before the full render. Once approved, send the same script to the talking-video route.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/avatar-1.0/talking-video \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: helpdesk-closed" \
  -d '{
    "avatar_handle": "my_presenter",
    "aspect_ratio": "9:16",
    "quality": "plus",
    "script": "Our support team is closed on Friday, December 25. We reopen on Monday, December 28. For urgent outages, check our status page. Our help center is open all day.",
    "captions": {
      "enabled": true,
      "style": "slam",
      "language": "auto"
    }
  }'

Limits

Do not promise response times the team cannot meet. Do not put customer data or ticket numbers into a script. If the avatar is a real person, make sure they agreed in writing and know where the clip will appear. The reopening date in the sample is a placeholder.