Responding to tickets: via Outlook or inside Sugar?

Hi all - 

We're moving to "new" Sugar from an old, unsupported community version.  Right now, my team all respond to cases inside the case by adding a note, which triggers an email that is sent from our main support email account. I know about the Out look connector, where folks respond to tickets from inside their Outlook, but we've never used it and I have a few questions.

1. When someone is on vacation, and a customer responds to an email about a case, how do other customer reps pick up that case?

2. If a customer has a rep's direct email, and sends a new case directly to that rep, how do the others see if it the rep is out that day?