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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.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
I just find it shocking that Microsoft hasn't figured out a way to have an automatic reply outside of working hours. Like, I'm literally staring at the settings page to set my working days (M-F, check boxes) and times (7am-3:30pm, drop down), but for some reason it's not paired with an out of office message option? I feel like a coder could create this feature in minutes, but here we are years later still asking why this isn't a feature in Outlook.
Hi Eleni
Is there a chance this will be something that is developed? I am in a similar situation working part-time; I like to set an out-of-office on my non-working days, Monday/Thursday, and it becomes annoying to have to turn it on when I leave on Friday and Wednesday and then remember to turn it off on Tuesday and Friday.
I agree. So many of us work in jobs where we get emails 24/7 expecting a response. We need an easy system to just set up an OOO reply!
HOW IS THIS NOT BUILT INTO OUTLOOK MICROSOFT???
I want an OOO that kicks in every day at 5pm until 8am the next day. I want one that kicks in every Friday at 5pm until Monday at 8am.
This should not be difficult!!
I don't work on Thursdays and the recurring reply would be very helpful for me. Thank you.
Hi, I am in a similar situation here as the business hours are changing and it is important to notify the customers. However, the options I see available with Microsoft are generic and has to be a manual approach on turning it on and off. I can schedule automatic but not for multiple days example: Monday to Friday different timings and Saturday for different (don't have an option to include multiple days or entries).
Kindly let me know the solution for this or if there is any turn around.
