How out-of-office replies work
An out-of-office (OOF) reply is a message Octopods sends back to a customer on your behalf when they contact you outside the open hours of the schedule you’ve linked to that channel. The reply uses the schedule’s timezone to decide whether the current moment is inside or outside your hours, so a midnight message in your timezone always counts as “outside hours” no matter where the customer is.
Out-of-office replies are configured per schedule, not per channel. Every channel linked to that schedule shares the same on/off setting and the same message text. If you need different messages for different channels, create a separate schedule for each and link the channels accordingly.
For the basics of creating and assigning a schedule first, see Creating a Schedule and Assigning Schedules to Channels.
When a reply is sent
Octopods sends the out-of-office message to a customer when all of these are true:
The channel that received the message is linked to a schedule.
That schedule has out-of-office messages turned on.
The current time falls outside the schedule’s open hours, or the day is marked as closed.
The incoming message came from a real customer (not from your team replying to a conversation).
No out-of-office reply has been sent to this same conversation in the last hour.
The one-hour limit per conversation prevents Octopods from spamming a customer who sends several messages in quick succession — they receive the message the first time and won’t see it again for at least an hour, even if they keep writing.
Turn out-of-office replies on
Sign in to Octopods.
Open Settings from the main navigation, then click Schedules.
If you have more than one schedule, click the tab for the schedule you want to edit.
Scroll to the Out of Office Message card. The card opens with a short explanation: “Out-of-office messages are sent automatically when you receive a message outside of your office hours. A maximum of 1 message is sent per hour per conversation.”
Select Yes, send out-of-office messages. A Message field appears below the radio buttons.
Write the message
In the Message textarea, type the reply customers should receive when they reach out outside your business hours.
The textarea allows up to 500 characters. A live counter underneath the field shows how many characters you have left (“500 characters left”) and updates as you type.
Plain text only — Octopods sends the message exactly as you type it, with no variables, formatting, or attachments.
Tip: A good out-of-office message acknowledges the customer, sets clear expectations about when they’ll hear back, and points them somewhere helpful in the meantime if possible. For example: “Thanks for reaching out! Our team is offline right now and will reply when we’re back online on Monday at 9 AM (Eastern Time). For urgent issues, please email urgent@example.com.”
Avoid giving customers exact “we’ll reply within X minutes” promises unless you can keep them — saying “we’ll be back at 9 AM Monday” is more accurate and easier to honor.
Warning: If you select Yes, send out-of-office messages but leave the Message field empty, the Save Schedule button stays disabled. Either type a message or switch the radio button back to No, do not send out-of-office messages before saving.
Turn out-of-office replies off
Open the schedule’s editor.
In the Out of Office Message card, select No, do not send out-of-office messages. The Message field is hidden.
Click Save Schedule.
Octopods stops sending out-of-office replies on every channel linked to this schedule from this moment on. The message text you previously typed is preserved, so you can re-enable replies later by switching the radio button back to Yes without retyping it.
What customers see
When the conditions above are met, the out-of-office message arrives in the customer’s conversation as a regular reply on whichever channel they used to write in. From the customer’s perspective it looks like any other message from your team — there’s no banner saying “this is automated” — so word your message to make it clear they’re hearing back from a system rather than a human in real time. Phrases like “Thanks for your message — our team will reply when we’re back online” make this obvious without sounding robotic.
The reply also appears in the conversation timeline in your Intercom workspace, so when your team comes back online they can see exactly what was sent and pick up the conversation from there.
Troubleshooting
The customer didn’t receive a reply. Check that the channel is linked to the schedule (see Assigning Schedules to Channels), that the schedule has Yes, send out-of-office messages selected, and that the message field isn’t empty. Then confirm the time the customer messaged was actually outside the schedule’s open hours in the schedule’s timezone.
A customer messaged us many times but only got one reply. That’s by design — Octopods only sends an out-of-office message once per hour per conversation so customers aren’t spammed. The next reply they’ll receive is the one your team writes when they’re back online.
Replies are going out during our business hours. Open the schedule and double-check the timezone in the Weekly Hours card matches the timezone you operate in. A mismatched timezone is the most common cause of “after hours” being calculated incorrectly.
What’s next
See the Channels section for the full list of channels that can use a schedule.