How to send an autoresponse email only during certain time

[Pavel_Plachky3]

Hi

I need to send an email in response to filling out a form. However, this email must be sent only if the form was submitted outside of business hours, which is a static time window Monday through Friday. Can this be done? 

[satishkumarkvs]

Hi,

I feel this is possible to some extent using the 'wait' step. You may need to update the date and time in the Flow tab. More information below in the link. Hope this helps!

https://docs.marketo.com/display/public/DOCS/Use+a+Specific+Date+in+a+Wait+Flow+Step

Regards,

Satish Kumar

[Pavel_Plachky3]

Hi Satish, can you be more detailed about how you think it would work? I do not want to wait. I want to either send the email or not send it based on the current time and weekday.

[Pavel_Plachky3]

I thought of something: Can I run a Velocity script that would check the current date and time and intentionally crash the Velocity engine if it was during the business hours? 

@SanfordWhiteman I remember you suggested this technique as an emergency break in batch emails, do you have an opinion on using something like this in a triggered email?

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

Correct, you can throw a Velocity error (let's not say "crash the engine," that's far too frightening, it's a caught exception from the standpoint of the engine itself!). That'll cause a Soft Bounce.  I call this the "Poison Pill" technique.

[Pavel_Plachky3]

Thanks, Sanford for the insight, it is very useful.

[Melissa_Day]

I believe you could also build a smart list with a trigger of Fills out Form and constraint of Date of Activity set to 'in time frame' set to 'This Week M F'. Then your smart campaign could trigger on the form fill alone, with the first step of your flow being to remove from the campaign if they are a member of the M-F smart list. That should cover anyone filling out the form on Saturday or Sunday.

[SanfordWhiteman]

That won't consider business hours, though.