Microsoft Outlook channel

Microsoft Outlook is an online personal information manager. Pipelines currently integrates with the Email and Calendar features only.

Please note that terms used in the Microsoft Outlook channel categories are Microsoft Outlook specific terminology.

How to connect

1. On the My pipelines page, click Create a pipeline. Enter name, description, and tag fields and click the Create Pipelines button. The pipelines wizard displays:
   
2. From the wizard you choose the connections for the first steps of your pipeline. When you choose a type, you'll add the channels and steps for your first steps. You can always add more steps later. A Triggered pipeline is started by a specific event in real-time. A Scheduled pipeline will start according to a schedule. A Manual pipeline only starts manually. Once you've completed the wizard, you'll be prompted for connection detail, if necessary. If you are an experienced builder, click the Start from scratch button and then from the right side of the page, choose the All to list all available channels.
3. Expand Microsoft Outlook in the list of channels and click Connect to Microsoft Outlook.
4. In the pop-up window review the permissions that Pipelines will be requesting. Click Connect to Microsoft Outlook when you are done.
   
5. Microsoft may require you to sign in at this point. Enter your credentials to continue.
6. Microsoft will show the permissions being requested. Expand each for more information. Click Accept when done.
   

How to reconnect the Microsoft Outlook channel

You may need to reconnect your account to a channel. Reasons may be (but not limited to):

• If you need to connect a different account.

• Authorization updates, such as a changed password.

• Editing the access rights that Pipelines has to the channel.

To reconnect:

1. Select a pipeline that already has Microsoft Outlook in it.
2. Open a step containing Microsoft Outlook.
3. Under account, select Connect (or reconnect) and follow the process above, How to connect.
   

Note: You can switch the account used in your pipeline by reconnecting. You don't have to create a new pipeline. Sometimes, if you are already logged into your MS account even when clicking reconnect, you may find that you can't the enter the credentials for another account. Instead, MS will connect you the account where you are already logged in. In this case, try using a browser incognito or private window to reconnect.

Steps

The steps you can use with Microsoft Outlook fall into two categories: Calendar Events and Emails.

Limits

These are known limits with the Outlook channel:

• Attachments on Send an Email with Attachments/ Reply to an Email have size limit of 150 MB.
• Every single file have size limit of 100 MB

Issue Tracking

We need an application that keeps track of customer issue requests. Here are our requirements.

• Support staff can do the work to update the ticket and craft replies to end users directly in a Quickbase app without needing to jump into the group mailbox 

• End users can receive updates and reply via emails from the group mailbox without needing to go into the ticketing system 

• All correspondence between the support team and the end users is tracked in a single email correspondence and the messages in this conversation are logged against the ticket in the QB app.

First of all we need to create a new app(Customer Requests) in Quickbase. Then, we need a table Requests where we will save the information about each request. We can use the following fields:

Request Subject, Request Target Id, Priority, Status, Assigned To, Document records, Add Document, Customer Email, Work Order ID, Date Created, Date Modified, Last Modified By, Record Owner, Related Contact, Mail Body, Mail Thread IDMail Thread ID - the id of the request mail. Work Order ID - the id of the request.

Now, we create two pipelines. The first one will create a new record in the table when a new request is received and the will send an initial reply.

The first step of the pipeline should be New Email in Microsoft Outlook.

We might want to specify that the Subject does not start with “RE:” because otherwise we will fall into a loop of sending replies, creating records for them and sending another replies. In the second step we create a record in the Request table.

In the final step we send an initial reply with the info of the request in the table.

The second pipeline will send another reply on status change in the Request table.

The first step will trigger the pipeline on status change in a record of the table.

The second step will retrieve the initial email by id.

The final step will send the reply informing the sender about the change of the issue status.