To set an away message, open the automation settings panel and define business hours: a timezone plus per-day hour ranges, with the away reply toggled on and its text filled in. Any inbound message arriving outside those hours gets that text automatically. A welcome message works the same way, for a conversation's first inbound message inside business hours.
Open the auto-replies settings panel (admin access only) and configure a weekly business-hours schedule: pick your timezone, then set opening and closing hours for each day you're open. Turn on the away reply and write its text. From then on, any inbound message that arrives outside those hours gets the away text sent back automatically, through the same delivery path a normal agent reply uses, so it shows up in the conversation like any other message.
The welcome message fires once: on the very first inbound message of a brand-new conversation, and only if that message arrives inside business hours. A second message on the same conversation never triggers another welcome. If the first message instead arrives outside business hours, it gets the away reply, not the welcome, since a conversation only ever gets one of the two.
Yes. Both responders share one cooldown: at most one automated reply per conversation in a 24-hour window. If a conversation already received an automated reply within that window, the next inbound message stays silent instead of triggering another one, even if the hours condition would otherwise match.
Auto-replies also draw from your plan's monthly automation allowance. When that allowance is used up, the responders stop sending until it resets rather than sending and creating extra charges. See current plans for allowance details and upgrade options.
Stravax Engage decides who owns the reply to an inbound message using a fixed order of priority:
| Priority | Who replies |
|---|---|
| 1 | A human agent (conversation is assigned or paused for a human) |
| 2 | An active chatbot flow session already running on that conversation |
| 3 | Away or welcome auto-reply |
| 4 | The AI qualifier |
In practice this means: if an agent has picked up a conversation, or a chatbot flow is mid-conversation with the contact, auto-replies stay silent, no matter what your business hours say. When an auto-reply does fire, the AI qualifier does not also reply to that same message, so a contact only ever gets one automated response per inbound message.
Only a genuine inbound customer message can trigger an away or welcome reply. Delivery receipts, read receipts, status updates, and your own outbound messages echoing back never trigger anything, and a conversation with your own business number as the contact is never auto-replied to. This keeps auto-replies from ever looping on themselves.
An auto-reply is sent through the same delivery path as a normal agent message, so it appears live in the inbox like any other outbound message and counts toward your usual message metering, not as a separate line item.