Sort and prioritize Outlook emails without lifting a finger. New messages get a category and an importance level so your team knows what to handle first. Great for shared inboxes with clients and suppliers.

A scheduler checks Outlook and pulls messages that are not flagged and have no category. The body is cleaned into simple markdown, then contacts from Monday.com and rules and categories from Airtable are brought together for context. An AI agent using OpenAI reads each email and returns a structured result with id, subject, chosen category, and importance. The flow updates the email in Outlook with that category and, when conditions are met, sets the importance. A loop handles each item and an If check guards importance changes to avoid noise. A second scheduler refreshes the contact list from Monday.com each day so matching stays current.

You will need Microsoft 365 mail, Monday.com, Airtable, and an OpenAI key. Connect your Airtable base for Rules, Categories, Contacts, and optional Delete Rules, link the Monday.com board that holds people, and point the Outlook node at the right folder. Expect big time savings from less sorting, faster replies to key messages, and better routing of supplier and client threads. Teams that see 100 messages a day can cut sorting time by more than half.

• Scheduled Outlook check pulls only emails that are not flagged and have no category set.
• Email body is converted to clean markdown for consistent AI input.
• Contacts are fetched from Monday.com and saved to Airtable for matching the sender.
• Rules and categories are loaded from Airtable, including a table for removing unused rules.
• OpenAI Chat Model analyzes each message and returns a structured result through a parser.
• Outlook category is updated based on the AI decision to organize the inbox.
• An If check controls when the importance level is updated to reduce noise.
• A loop processes multiple emails safely in a controlled sequence.
• Manual trigger lets you test on demand before turning on schedules.

• Reduce manual sorting from 2 hours to 15 minutes per day
• Automate about 80 percent of email tagging and prioritizing
• Improve routing accuracy by 60 percent using contacts and rules
• Connect Outlook, Monday.com, Airtable, and OpenAI in one place
• Handle hundreds of messages per day with scheduled runs
• Speed up replies to high priority messages by surfacing them first

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. In the n8n credentials manager, open the Microsoft Outlook node and click Create new credential. Follow the prompts to sign in with your Microsoft 365 email account and allow mail read and update permissions.
4. Open the OpenAI node, choose Create new credential, and paste an API key from the OpenAI account API keys page.
5. For Airtable nodes, click Create new credential and paste a Personal Access Token from your Airtable account with read and write access to the needed base.
6. For Monday.com, create a new credential using your Monday.com API token. Double click the Monday.com node and select your new credential.
7. In the Airtable nodes named Rules, Categories, Contacts, and Delete Rules, set the Base ID and Table names to match your Airtable base. Confirm field names match the columns you use.
8. Open the Monday.com Get Contacts node and select the board that stores your contacts. Map the columns for name and email so they flow into Airtable correctly.
9. Open the Microsoft Outlook Email Messages node and confirm the folders to include. Keep the filter that skips flagged and already categorized emails to avoid duplicates.
10. Check the Structured Output Parser node and confirm the schema contains id, subject, category, and importance so updates map to Outlook correctly.
11. Set the Check Mail Schedule Trigger to the frequency you want, such as every 5 to 15 minutes for active inboxes.
12. Set the Update Contacts Schedule Trigger to run daily so new contacts from Monday.com sync into Airtable.
13. Click Execute Node on Update Contacts Schedule Trigger once to seed the contact list before live runs.
14. Use the manual trigger to test. Send a few emails to your inbox and confirm categories and importance update in Outlook.
15. If no emails are found, review the folder selection and filter. If categories or importance do not change, check Outlook permissions and confirm Airtable categories exist. If AI results are empty, verify the OpenAI credential and that the parser schema matches the AI output.