Stop wasting hours sorting email. This build reads your Outlook inbox, classifies new messages, and sets priority so teams respond faster. It fits operations and account teams that handle many supplier and client emails every day.

On a schedule, it pulls only uncategorized and unflagged emails from chosen Outlook folders. The body is cleaned into Markdown for clear AI reading. Contacts are refreshed from Monday.com and stored in Airtable along with your categories and rules. An AI agent reviews each message with that context and returns a structured result with the email id, category, and importance. The flow then updates the email in Outlook and skips changes when rules say to ignore.

You will need a Microsoft 365 mailbox, an Airtable base for Contacts, Rules, and Categories, a Monday.com board with contact details, and an OpenAI key. Expect daily triage time to drop from about one hour to a few minutes, with more consistent tagging and priorities. This helps vendor management, client support queues, and shared inboxes. Set your folders, rules, and categories, then run a test and review one batch for quality.

• Scheduled check that pulls only uncategorized and unflagged Outlook emails
• Email body converted to Markdown for clear AI input
• Daily contact sync from Monday.com into an Airtable Contacts table
• Rules and categories stored in Airtable for easy updates
• AI analysis returns a structured result with id, category, and importance
• Outlook message category and importance updated by message id
• Conditional logic that skips updates when no change is needed
• Batch handling with Loop and Merge nodes for stable processing

• Reduce manual sorting time from 60 minutes to 5 minutes per day
• Automate about 90 percent of email tagging and priority setting
• Improve category accuracy by using rules and known contacts
• Connect Outlook, Monday.com, and Airtable in one flow
• Handle 10 emails per run now and scale by raising the limit
• Keep inbox clean by skipping flagged and already categorized messages

1. Import the template into n8n: Create a new workflow in n8n > Click the three dots menu > Select 'Import from File' > Choose the downloaded JSON file.
2. You'll need accounts with Microsoft Outlook, Monday.com, Airtable and OpenAI. See the Tools Required section above for links to create accounts with these services.
3. Microsoft Outlook credentials: Double click the Outlook nodes, open the 'Credential to connect with' dropdown, click 'Create new credential', then sign in to your Microsoft 365 account and approve access to read and update messages.
4. Configure Outlook email retrieval: In the Outlook get all messages node, choose the folders to include. Keep the filter set to flag/flagStatus eq 'notFlagged' and not categories/any() so flagged or categorized emails are skipped. Set the limit to match your batch size.
5. Set schedules: Open the Check Mail Schedule Trigger and Update Contacts Schedule Trigger. Adjust frequency to match your volume and API limits.
6. Create your Airtable base: Add tables named Contacts, Rules, and Categories. Include fields such as Email, Name, Company for Contacts and fields for matching text, category, and importance in Rules. Create a view for items you want to delete if you plan to use Delete Rules.
7. Airtable credentials: Double click each Airtable node (Contacts, Rules, Categories, Delete Rules, Contact), click 'Create new credential', then paste your Airtable Personal Access Token. Select the Base and the correct Table for each node.
8. Monday.com credentials: Open the Monday.com Get Contacts node, click 'Create new credential', paste your Monday.com API token, then select the board and columns that hold names and email addresses.
9. OpenAI credentials: Open the OpenAI Chat Model node, click 'Create new credential', paste your API key from the OpenAI account page, and confirm the model is set to gpt-4o with temperature 0.2.
10. Verify context merge: Ensure the Rules, Categories, and Contact nodes feed into the Merge node before the AI analysis so the agent has contacts and rules available.
11. Align categories: In Outlook, create or confirm the same category names that you store in Airtable. The update step uses these exact names.
12. Test the run: Click Test workflow. Confirm messages are returned, the body is converted to Markdown, the AI returns id, category, and importance, and the Outlook message shows the new category and priority.
13. Troubleshooting: If Outlook updates fail, check mailbox permissions and that the message id from the AI output matches the retrieved email. If contacts do not load, confirm Monday.com board access and Airtable write permissions. If the AI output is missing fields, review the Structured Output Parser schema and the AI prompt.