How can I set up a recurring automatic reply during specific hours?

Anonymous
2024-01-31T22:31:14+00:00

I work in an industry where my clients may require urgent assistance outside of normal business hours. My business engages a third party to handle after-hours emergencies on behalf of the team, but we often receive complaints that clients cannot easily access the after-hours emergency contact number, despite it being available on our website and our after-hours voicemail. In most cases, clients will call the team and disregard the voicemail, then follow up with an email complaining that we're unavailable.

It would be beneficial to have the option to set up an automatic reply where the after-hours contact information is sent to clients when our staff are emailed between 5pm and 8:30am, 5 days per week.

I have tried using the rules feature and fiddled around with the automatic reply feature, but neither would allow me to set up a recurring automatic reply without setting a start and finish date/time. I also checked whether it's possible to synchronize an automatic reply with my calendar block-outs, but this wasn't possible either.

Any guidance would be appreciated.

Outlook | Windows | New Outlook for Windows | For home

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-02-11T06:58:37+00:00

    Absolute insanity.. like others here, I work business hours then have to do an on call week on/off and need to provide an OOO to assist during those odd hours.

    So you can set up reoccurring appointment in a calendar but not have the same function within the 'new and improved' (but not..) Outlook.

    Fix this basic business requirement to be functional and intuitive to those who are forced to use your product without choice.

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-02-06T05:37:45+00:00

    Hello,

    I am glad to tell you that I could finally make it work. One the girls suggested the way and it´s Power Automate.

    Do you know how that works? I had someone doing but I can tell you it takes a little of programming (I think Chat GPT might give you the info). it but I can give you the first steps here.

    You go to office.com and enter in your account

    2- Go to the 9 dots on the top left and select Power Automate, then select My Flows.

    3- In my case, we created 3 flows. There is one for weekdays, Fridays, and weekends. And there is another for single days. We want to change them, so you have to go to the top and click edit on the pencil.

    4- Setup automatic replies there are several parts: start time and end time. We can change the start time to the hour after the end of the instruction, and the same for the end time.

    5- There is an internal message and an external message. Once you make the changes, you have to click save.

    I hope this helps.

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  3. Anonymous
    2025-02-05T23:35:54+00:00

    I'm in the same position as everyone else here! +1 Work and study in my case, so annoying to have to turn it on and off every week.

    Please Microsoft, help the little people.

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  4. Anonymous
    2025-01-27T03:38:31+00:00

    I work Tuesday through Saturday and I would like to be able to schedule an auto-reply for every week during the year on Mondays to send a reply that I am out on Mondays this year. PLEASE work on this!

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  5. Anonymous
    2025-01-15T17:36:06+00:00

    Thanks, I'll check it out... although, after all of this, I cannot remember what I was trying to do in the first place!

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