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.

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-01-14T23:39:22+00:00

    This is hilarious, you go through the ENTIRE process and then tell us you've just wasted our time as this is EXACTLY what we are trying to avoid. THose are minutes I will NEVER get back.

    Hey Julie, if it helps I did find a way to do it :)

    You have to use Microsoft Power Automate (automatic flows).

    These 2 links link explain it: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/set-up-recurring-automatic-replies-senn-chiee-lim/ and https://m365scripts.com/exchange-online/how-to-set-recurring-automatic-replies-in-outlook/

    I was finally able to have it set automatically for every friday to monday.

    Hope it helps! Cheers!

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  3. Anonymous
    2025-01-14T08:37:39+00:00

    What a terrible answer. The question is: how do I setup a RECURRING ooo. You give a whole story that everybody knows how to setup a single ooo and end with "unfortunately, there is no easy way to make the recurring automatic reply you need to enable this manually".

    If there is a complex way, tell us the complex way. If there is no way, just say that. This is just polluting the search for an answer on a good question.

    Thank you!

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  4. Anonymous
    2025-01-13T22:55:41+00:00

    It did work! But for some reason it only works if you activate the flow on the first day you want it to run. Like mine runs from thursday to monday so I activated it on a thursday and it has been working ever since :) hope it works for you!

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  5. Anonymous
    2025-01-09T17:08:24+00:00

    Thanks! This seems the best solution. I am going to try. I hope it worked for you.

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