Airtable automation actions: Outlook

First, we will set up a trigger to fire when a project enters our "Incomplete projects by leader" view. Choose the corresponding table and view within the base and then test the trigger.

1. Add the send email action - The first action we’ll add to this automation is an Outlook send email action. This allows us to send an email directly from an Outlook email account. To add an action, click + Add Action and then click Send email under Outlook Email.
   
2. Authorize and connect - Then select your Outlook Email account (if you have already connected it to Airtable) or connect a new Outlook account.
   
3. Customize the email template - Once you’ve done that, you can populate the recipients, subject line, message body, and attachments. The total size of the email message (including attachments) is limited to 35MB. Your automation can send out a custom message that combines information from Airtable records, emojis, rich text, and plain text. You can click the blue and white plus sign to add values from the triggering record. In this example, we’re sending an email to the Project Lead with details about the new project.
   
4. Additional options - By clicking on the Show more options drop-down arrow, you will have the ability to customize four additional parts of the automatic email you send out, which includes CC, BCC, From name, and Reply to. It's often a good practice to BCC your own email address. You can remove your email address after the automation is confirmed to be sending the email correctly.
   
   
   
   Note

   You can preview the email that the automation will send out before testing the action. More info on that option can be found here.
5. Test - After your message looks the way you want it to you must click Run test to ensure the action is working properly. If the test runs successfully, then at this point it's a good idea to check that the test email was sent successfully. Note that it might take a few minutes for the message to appear in your inbox after the test runs successfully.

1. Add another action (Create event) - We’ll add another action to this automation to create an Outlook Calendar event for this new project’s kickoff meeting. To do this, click + Add action and then find Create event under Outlook Calendar.
   
2. Authorize - Again, you will need to connect your Outlook Calendar account. Even if you already connected your Outlook account for the Email action, you will need to connect your account again for the Calendar action. These two actions require different permissions, and you will need to add your Outlook account for both actions separately.
3. Customize event details - After connecting your Outlook Calendar account, you can start to specify the details of the event you'd like to create. You can configure both the start and end times of the event or create an all-day event. Just as in the email action, you can also use values from the triggering record to populate the event details.
4. When configuring the event, you must select a start time and end time. The input format of the date and time is flexible, and many formats should work. A few examples of formats that will work are:

• August 18, 2020 at 6pm PST
• 08/18/2020 at 6pm (if the time zone is excluded, it defaults to your calendar time zone)
• 2020-08-18T12:05:05.217Z (ISO format)
  
  You can also set location, attendees, and configure video conferencing for the event. All attendees added will receive an email invitation to the event.
  Once again, you will need to click “Run test” to ensure that this step is configured properly. You should now see a new event in your Outlook calendar with the values you specified!

Since we'll want to keep the calendar event we created up to date, we will add an additional Update record action to this automation. Below we updated our Airtable record with the returned Event ID from our newly created Outlook calendar event:

If you have previously stored Outlook calendar event IDs in your table then you can use the Update event action to update an Outlook calendar event.

1. Scenario and trigger - Suppose we have a table tracking upcoming client meetings, and we want to make sure that if someone changes the dates in our table that change is automatically reflected in our Outlook calendar. We will use the When a record is updated trigger to kick off this automation whenever someone updates either the end or start date fields in our table. 
2. Add the action - Once the trigger is set up you can add the Outlook: Update event action.
   
3. Authorize and connect - Then, Authorize a new account or connect to a previously authorized Outlook Calendar account.
4. Add event IDs - Next, you will need to enter the Outlook Calendar Event ID for the event you'd like to update. We stored our Outlook Calendar Event ID in a field named "Calendar Event ID" in our table. So we can access information from our trigger by clicking on the blue + icon and adding the field we stored our Event ID in.
   
5. Choose which fields to update - With the event ID entered, we can now specify what we'd like to update in that Calendar event. Choose a field from the dropdown menu to select what exactly you'd like to update on the Outlook Calendar event.
   
6. Dynamic or static updates - Once you've selected the fields you'd like to update you can choose to fill those fields either with static information (that will stay the same every time) or dynamic information from a previous step in your automation or information from a record in the base.
   
   If you choose to add "Dynamic" information for a field, you can add values from previous steps in your automation by clicking on the blue +.