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Set up an after-hours auto-reply

Automatically reply to contacts who message an inbox while it's closed, once per closed period, using the inbox's business-hours settings.

Written By EmuChat

Last updated About 3 hours ago

An after-hours auto-reply is an automatic text sent to a contact who messages an inbox while it's closed. You set it up with the inbox's business hours, and it's only sent when business hours are turned on.

Set up the auto-reply

For a shared inbox, you need to be a workspace Administrator. For a personal inbox, you need to be its owner.

  1. Go to Settings > Inboxes, edit the inbox, and open the Routing tab.

  2. Set the inbox Timezone and turn on Limit to business hours.

  3. For each day from Monday to Sunday, turn the day on and set its opening and closing times, or leave it off to keep the inbox closed all day. The closing time must be later than the opening time, so a day can't run past midnight.

  4. In After-hours auto-reply, write the message to send while the inbox is closed. The field starts empty.

  5. Select Save business hours.

If business hours are off, the reply is blank, or every day is turned off, nothing is sent. Messages from a webchat widget never get the auto-reply.

One reply per closed period

Each conversation gets the auto-reply once per closed period, not once per message. If you close at 5pm Friday and reopen at 9am Monday, a contact who messages on Saturday and again on Sunday gets one auto-reply for the whole weekend. If the auto-reply fails to send, the contact's next message in that period triggers another try.

Note: If someone changes that day's business hours after an auto-reply has gone out, and the change creates a new closed period, the contact can get another auto-reply.

Limits and billing

  • The auto-reply must fit within 16 SMS parts, the same maximum as any message. A longer reply won't save.

  • The auto-reply is sent from the inbox's number as a normal outbound SMS, so it's charged like any other message.

To set up the inbox and its number in the first place, see Creating your first inbox (the inbox wizard). Business hours also affect how emu.chat notifies you: see Notification preferences. To reuse wording for replies you send yourself, see Create and use message templates.

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