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Email triage & inbox

Outlook inbox → AI triage into categories + urgent alert in Teams

Incoming Outlook mail sorted by intent, with the urgent ones posted to Teams.

Every new Outlook message is read by a model, given one of your categories, and moved to the matching folder. Anything in a category you mark urgent, such as Action needed or Complaint, is posted to a Teams channel with the sender, subject and a one-line gist. Executive assistants and office managers stop reading every newsletter to find the emails that need a reply. The inbox opens already sorted.

How it works

  1. O

    Trigger

    New message received in the Inbox folder, polled by the Outlook trigger

    Microsoft Outlook

  2. if

    Step 1

    Skip mail that never needs triage

    Drops automatic replies, calendar responses and messages from senders on your ignore list before the model sees anything, so no model call is spent on them.

  3. AI

    Step 2

    Classify the message into one category

    Sends the sender, subject and a trimmed body to GPT with your category definitions and gets back one category name and a one-line gist.

  4. O

    Step 3

    Apply the category and move the message

    Updates the message with the matching Outlook category and moves it to the folder mapped to that category, for example Invoices or Newsletters.

  5. if

    Step 4

    Branch on urgency

    Continues only when the category is one you flagged as urgent, such as Action needed, Complaint or Legal.

  6. T

    Step 5

    Post the urgent ones to a Teams channel

    Posts a channel message with sender, subject, the gist and the message's web link, which opens it in Outlook on the web.

What changes once it runs

  • Each new message carries a category and sits in its folder within one polling interval of arrival.
  • Urgent categories reach the Teams channel with a direct link, so nobody searches for the thread.
  • The category list is yours: rename, add or remove categories in one block and the model follows.
  • Newsletters, receipts and automated notices leave the Inbox folder without a person reading them.

What you get

  • The n8n workflow export, tested end to end
  • Setup guide for the Microsoft sign-in, the Graph permissions and the OpenAI key
  • Classification prompt with the category definitions in a block you edit
  • Category-to-folder mapping sheet you fill in once
  • Recorded walkthrough of the first batch of messages being sorted
  • Thirty days of email support for setup questions

Before you start

  • Microsoft 365 mailbox connected to n8n's Outlook and Teams credentials; self-hosted needs an Entra app with Mail.ReadWrite and ChannelMessage.Send
  • The Outlook categories and folders created in the mailbox before the first run, so names match
  • OpenAI API key with billing enabled
  • Teams channel the signed-in account can post to
  • n8n cloud or self-hosted; the Outlook trigger polls, so no inbound webhook is needed

Built for

Questions before you buy

How accurate is the sorting?
That depends on how clearly your categories are defined, and this page does not quote a number. The prompt tells the model to answer Unsure when nothing fits, and Unsure messages stay in the Inbox untouched. Run it for a week, read what landed in Unsure, and tighten the definitions.
Can it use Claude instead of GPT?
Yes. The classification step is a single model call and the package includes the same prompt for the Anthropic node. Swap the node and the credential; nothing else changes.
Does it work on a shared mailbox?
n8n's Outlook credential has a Use Shared Mailbox switch that takes the shared address; the signed-in user needs Full Access to that mailbox in Microsoft 365. Both the trigger and the update steps then read and write that mailbox, with no extra nodes.
What does it cost to run?
One model call per message that passes the pre-filter, at whichever OpenAI model you select. The prompt is short: subject, sender and a trimmed body. The setup guide links OpenAI's pricing page rather than quoting a figure that will be out of date.

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