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Automation Trigger: Outlook
Emma Montgomery avatar
Written by Emma Montgomery
Updated over a week ago

What is a Trigger?


An automation trigger is the “switch” to run an automation under the defined conditions you specify.

When Something happens (the Trigger) and These Conditions are true, then This Event (the Action) occurs.

SmartSuite's When an email is received trigger for Outlook allows you to automatically take action in SmartSuite based on a trigger from Outlook. If you haven't already, we also recommend that you check our articles on creating an automation and managing automations for more information about setting up new workflows.


Setup

Prerequisites

The following options are available when configuring this trigger:

  • Outlook Account. To use this trigger you must first authorize with Outlook and give SmartSuite permissions to access your Outlook inbox and messages. Click Add new Microsoft Outlook Credential to log in to your account.

  • Folder. You can optionally move new mail that matches your conditions to a folder in Outlook. Note that the folder must already exist.

  • Conditions. Here you can add one or more conditions that must be true for the trigger to fire. These conditions match values in the Outlook message. See the list of available Outlook properties.

Note: When you specify more than one condition, you must select either AND (the default) or OR.

Choosing AND requires that all conditions are true to fire the trigger. Choosing OR instructs the trigger to fire if any condition specified is true.

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:

Access the Automations 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.

Add a new Automation

Select the Outlook Trigger

After creating your automation, you can select Outlook from the Integrations section of the Add Trigger list. You can then select the When an Email is received trigger. It looks like this:

Choose an Action

After selecting the Outlook trigger, you gain the flexibility to choose from a wide array of actions that can be seamlessly integrated into your workflow, both SmartSuite internal and any of our integrated actions.


How to Add a Outlook Email

Configuring it just requires a few clicks. You will be prompted to select or connect your Outlook account. Once your account is connected, the dropdown options for Microsoft will be pre-populated based on your Microsoft account.


If you are not authenticated you will be prompted to log in to your Outlook account. You will see a screen like this:

If you've already added other Microsoft previously, you'll see a note mentioning that SmartSuite already has access to other Microsoft services. If this is your first Microsoft integration being set up with us, you'll see a screen that looks like this:

After this initial account configuration has been completed, you can then specify the details for the Outlook trigger. You are required to specify the folder you'd like the trigger to watch, and then you're able to optionally set any conditions up to further filter what causes the automation to fire.

Filter conditions include:

  • Attachment Count

  • Equal to

  • Not equal to

  • Greater than

  • Less than

  • Equal to or greater than

  • Equal to or less than

  • Is empty

  • Is not empty

  • Changes

  • Body (HTML)

  • Body (Plain)

  • CC Emails

  • CC Names

  • From Email

  • From Name

  • Google Account

  • Labels

  • Subject

  • To Emails

  • To Names

  • Contains

  • Does not contain

  • Equal to

  • Not equal to

  • Is empty

  • Is not empty

  • Changes

  • Date

  • Is

  • Is not

  • Less than

  • Is after

  • Is on or before

  • Is on or after

  • Is empty

  • Is not empty


Resolving Permissions Issues

The easiest way to fix any of these permissions-related issues is to:

  • Delete any existing credential from the automation

  • Add the credentials again.

Doing this should resolve nearly every permissions-related problem. If you have done this and still have problems with your automation, please reach out to our support team via Intercom or email (support@smartsuite.com)

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