Outlook
Read, search and send mail, make drafts, and read, create, update and cancel calendar events.
An Outlook connection gives a playbook's functions twelve operations of Microsoft Graph, from a document Auto ships, on the mail and calendar of the person who connects. You sign in with your work account and allow access, and the connection acts as you: mail it sends is from you, and events it creates are in your calendar.
Available on Auto Cloud and on self-hosted runtimes.
What a playbook can do with Outlook
- List and search your messages and read one, and list your mail folders.
- Make a draft, send mail, and reply to a message.
- Read your calendar between two dates, list your events and read one.
- Create, update and cancel events.
Nothing is deleted. Mail is sent as you, so the function that sends names what it sends in its definition, where the team can read it.
The tools, as the connection lists them
Tools that read: me.ListMessages, me.GetMessages, me.ListMailFolders, me.ListCalendarView, me.ListEvents and me.GetEvents.
Tools that act: me.CreateMessages, me.CreateEvents, me.UpdateEvents, me.sendMail, me.messages.message.reply and me.events.event.cancel.
An example workflow
Supplier invoices, sorted before anyone opens the inbox. A schedule trigger runs the workflow every hour. A lookup function searches the last hour's messages for ones with an attachment from the supplier domains in its input. A reasoning function reads each message's text and, with the finance team's checklist in its prompt, decides whether it is an invoice, a reminder or something else, and pulls the amount, the invoice number and the due date it can see. A computation function checks the invoice number against the ones the playbook has recorded. An interaction function replies to a duplicate with the team's standard wording, as a draft for a person to send, with me.CreateMessages, and for a new invoice creates a calendar event on the due date with the details, with me.CreateEvents. A person decides what to pay; the run's history in Studio keeps every message read and every draft made.
How to connect Outlook
- Sign in with your work account and allow access to your mail and calendar. Your tenant's consent policy may require an administrator to allow Auto once, as Microsoft's default policy for new tenants does for mail and calendar. The consent screen shows the permissions listed below.
Then:
- Ask your agent to connect Outlook to Auto, or open Settings, Agents, Connections in Auto Studio and choose Outlook.
- On the Studio page, check the service and its access, choose which playbooks may use the connection, and approve it.
- Have your agent check one small read through the connection before a function depends on it.
What it needs
- A work or school account in a Microsoft 365 tenant. A personal Microsoft account does not sign in here.
- If your tenant's policy requires it, an administrator who allows Auto once; Microsoft's default policy for new tenants requires that for
Mail.ReadWriteandCalendars.ReadWrite. - Your agent connected to Auto and signed in as you, with permission to change your organization, if your agent adds the connection.
- On a self-hosted runtime, an application registered in Microsoft Entra for the runtime, since Microsoft registers no client itself, as Let people add connections sets out.
Microsoft grants mail and calendar access as read-and-write scopes; the connection's operations delete nothing.
Permissions Auto asks for
- Read, create, change and delete Outlook mail, without sending it.
- Send mail as the person who connects.
- Read, create, change and delete events in Outlook calendars.
- Read the Microsoft profile of the person who connects, and basic company information.
- Keep access to Outlook mail and calendars when nobody is signed in.
Good to know
What a function reads from your mail is kept in the run's history, where people with access to the playbook can read it. Give an Outlook connection to the one playbook that needs it, under Only select playbooks, and keep the functions that send mail few and named. Microsoft's answers reach most of Graph's schemas, so a message's full body comes with it; a function's prompt says which parts matter.