What is an Action?
An automation action is a step that performs a task, activity, event, or change. Think of a action as:
When Something happens (the Trigger) and These Conditions are true, then This Event (the Action) occurs.
SmartSuite's Send Email action for Outlook Email allow you to send email via your own Outlook account. If you haven't already, we also recommend that you check our our articles on creating an automation and managing automations for more information about setting up new workflows.
Setup
Prerequisites
To use Outlook Email you will need to have an existing Outlook account. Outlook Email actions are part of SmartSuite's automations system, which all account types have access to. Simply click the Automations option in the Solution drop-down menu (see image below).
Note
This action requires Solution Manager permissions or the Administrator role. To learn more, please see our article on roles and permissions.
Accessing the Automations configuration interface:
Create a New Automation
Once the Solution Automations dialog is displayed, click Add Automation to begin creating an automation that will interact with Outlook.
Choose a Trigger
You will need to set up a trigger to tell the Automation when to run and which record to use as the source of data for your Outlook Email action.
For example, you might be tracking user-submitted help requests in SmartSuite. If you wanted to send email when a bug is created, you would select a When a Record is Created trigger to initiate the automation when the SmartSuite record is added.
Select the Send Email Action
After creating your automation and selecting your Trigger, you can select Outlook Email from the Integrations section of the Add Actions list. You can then select the Send Email action. It looks like this:
How to Send an Outlook Email
Whenever your automation trigger fires and the conditions are met, the Outlook Email send email action will send an email from the configured account. Configuring it just requires a few clicks.
You will be prompted to select or connect your Outlook account. Click on the Add new Outlook Email credential option to link an account. Alternatively you can select an account you have already connected.
Click Connect in the Microsoft Outlook dialog:
If you are not authenticated you will be prompted to log in to your Outlook account. You will see a screen like this when you have authenticated. Click the X or anywhere outside of the dialog to close it.
Note: you can disconnect your account from the automation at any time by clicking the Disconnect button on this screen.
After this initial account configuration has been completed, you can then specify the details for the email you want to create. Customizable fields include:
Send To. The email address(es) to send to.
Behind the More Options expander:
CC. Specifies carbon-copied email addresses.
BCC. Specifies blind-copied email addresses.
Subject. The subject for the email.
Message. The email body contents.
Include Field Comparisons. This includes the selected fields in a block at the end of the email that displays the current value of the field(s) and their prior value (if one exists).
You can add either static values to each of these fields, or map values from the triggering record as their value. Continue adding fields until you have populated everything you need in the issue that will be created in your Outlook email.
When you're done, click Save Automation at the bottom-right corner of the screen to save the automation and its configuration. Note that you can customize the name of the Email action by clicking on the dotted box at the top of the automation.
Note
You will be prompted to switch the automation on. If you click Yes, switch it on the automation will be active and will trigger when its criteria are met. You can also choose to keep it off if you're not yet ready to start sending email from your Outlook account.