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
    2025-01-07T16:45:32+00:00

    Hello,

    Can we set the above to reoccur on a weekly basis?

    Every Tuesday we have Wellness day and we have to set this up ever week oppose to setting it up to reoccur.

    Thank you.

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-01-01T01:17:27+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.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-12-10T05:21:43+00:00

    There is a way to do it using Microsoft Power Automate (automatic flows).

    This link explains it: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/set-up-recurring-automatic-replies-senn-chiee-lim/

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

    Cheers!

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-11-22T22:17:29+00:00

    I find it more shocking that people have been posting about this and requesting that it be made a feature since 2017, over 7 years, and it is still not an option for us at this point.

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    10+ people found this answer helpful.
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  5. Anonymous
    2024-11-22T08:20:30+00:00

    Hi, just wanted to add a hint to delete the OOO message from your Outlook settings (you may have it from your last annual leave), it happened to me that the weekly autoreply picked my old message from Outlook ("I'm OOO until xy...") instead of the weekly message set up in PowerAutomate (e.g. "I'm OOO on Mondays").

    Hope this helps

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