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
    2024-11-05T01:30:02+00:00

    Anyone who still has this issue, it can be easily done in Power Automate. You may be able to set it up yourself, or you can ask your IT team and point them here.

    We're going to leverage Power Automate and create two custom flows.

    For creating recurring OOO replies for every weekday, please follow the below.

    1. Go to https://make.powerautomate.com/ and login with your Microsoft credentials
    2. Click the Create button on the left and then Scheduled Cloud Flow.
    3. Name it Turn On Auto Replies, set to repeat every 1 week, unselect Saturday and Sunday, and click Next. The Time selection doesn't matter with this window.
    4. The next window you'll have a blank slate with a small Recurrence rectangle in the middle. Double click the Recurrence box and it will open options. Set the Hours and Minutes to your desired preference then Save at the top.
    5. Click the + button below the Recurrence box and it will pop open a search menu. Search for Set up automatic replies (V2 is what I picked) and click it to add another step to our flow.
    6. Double click the Setup auto replies box and use the settings Status to Scheduled and External Audience to All. Write your External Reply Message how you'd like.

    If you are not seeing these parameters it's because they're hidden under the Advanced Parameters menu at the top.

    1. Click Save again.
    2. Now we create another flow to shut them off every morning. This one is much easier. Create another, separate weekly Scheduled Cloud Flow and unselect Saturday and Sunday.
    3. Double click Recurrence and set the hours and minutes you want auto replies to be shut off. Click Save.
    4. Click the + again and search for Setup auto replies. Double click the new auto reply box and set the Status to Disabled. Click Save at the top.

    The final flow of the week will occur on Friday at 5PM so replies stay on and don't get turned off until Monday at 8AM.

    You can test these out by manually Run-ning them or hit the "Test" button on top. If you don't see auto-replies flip on in Outlook for desktop, send yourself a test email and see it working.

    Something similar was discussed in the link below.

    https://fourco.nl/blogs/setting-up-recurring-out-of-office-replies-with-microsoft-power-automate/

    However, note that it is not a Microsoft official documentation and caution should be taken while accessing external links posted there.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-11-11T13:54:26+00:00

    I too would love a feature like this to be introduced. It would make my life a lot easier.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-11-11T20:27:10+00:00

    I only intern Monday and Wednesdays. Need something that comes on at EOD Monday and EOD Wednesday until the following Monday. I am an intern and I am NOT checking my email outside of my hours.

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-11-21T17:40:11+00:00

    I clicked the link and CoPilot helped set it up. I have it turned on and ran a test, we will see tonight how it works.

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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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