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Once your Outlook mailbox is connected, IrisAgent can generate a reply to an incoming customer email using your knowledge base and past tickets. You choose whether IrisAgent saves the reply in Outlook for an agent to review and send, or sends it automatically. In both modes, the reply stays on the existing email thread and uses the connected support mailbox. You can enable AI replies for every email that has an answer, or limit them to emails that match conditions you define.
Outlook uses the same Case Triggers engine as your ticketing system, so conditions, actions, and variables work the way they do on tickets. See Tickets for the full set.

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Prerequisites

  1. Your Outlook mailbox is connected as a data source. See the Outlook connection guide for the initial setup.
  2. The OAuth connection includes Mail.ReadWrite for draft replies and Mail.Send for automatic replies. New Outlook connections request both permissions.
  3. Access to the IrisAgent dashboard as an admin. Enabling deflection is admin-only.
If Save as Outlook draft is unavailable, reconnect the existing Outlook integration once to approve Mail.ReadWrite. Follow Reconnect an existing Outlook mailbox to enable drafts.

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How Outlook emails become tickets

IrisAgent groups your mailbox into conversations:
  • A new inbound email (the start of a conversation) becomes a ticket.
  • A reply on an existing conversation becomes a comment on that ticket.
Triggers run on tickets, which means IrisAgent responds to the email that opens a conversation, not to every back-and-forth reply within it.

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Choose draft or automatic delivery

On the dashboard, go to Automate → Case Triggers. The AI Email Replies card includes a Delivery method menu:
  • Save as Outlook draft creates a reply in the connected mailbox’s Drafts folder. Nothing is sent to the customer. An agent can open the draft in Outlook, review or edit it, and send it manually.
  • Send automatically sends the AI reply to the customer as soon as the trigger runs. No agent review is required.
For a new Outlook setup with draft permission, Save as Outlook draft is selected by default. Existing triggers continue to send automatically unless an admin changes their delivery method. You can change the delivery method while AI Email Replies is enabled. The selection applies to future trigger runs and does not send drafts that are already waiting in Outlook.

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Option 1: Create replies for all eligible emails

Use this when you want IrisAgent to create a reply for every email that has an AI answer.
  1. On the dashboard, go to Automate → Case Triggers.
  2. On the AI Email Replies card, choose Save as Outlook draft or Send automatically.
  3. Turn on the AI Email Replies switch.
This creates a trigger named System: Case Deflection using AI that runs on every ticket where the AI produced an answer. There are no other conditions on it. Emails where the AI has no answer are left alone for your agents. You can turn this off at any time with the same switch. To review the trigger and its activity, open System: Case Deflection using AI.
We recommend starting with draft delivery or Option 2 below. This lets agents validate answer quality on real traffic before you enable automatic replies for the whole mailbox.

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Option 2: Create replies only for emails matching conditions

Use a custom trigger when AI replies should run only for a specific part of your email volume.
  1. On the dashboard, go to Automate → Case Triggers, and click Create New Trigger.
  2. Click Add conditions and add the conditions that decide which emails get a reply. See the table below for what works on Outlook.
  3. From the Actions panel, add AI email reply.
  4. In Delivery method, choose Save as Outlook draft or Send automatically.
  5. In the text box, add {{irisgpt.case.answer}}. This is replaced with the AI answer and its source links when the action runs. You can write your own text before and after it, such as a greeting or a line about how to reach a human.
  6. Name the trigger using the pencil icon at the top.
  7. Click Add New Trigger to save.
Emails that match the conditions and have an AI answer get a draft or an automatic reply, according to the selected delivery method. Emails that match but have no AI answer are skipped, and IrisAgent will retry them if an answer is generated later.

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Conditions on Outlook

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What happens to the reply

  • In draft mode, the reply is saved in the connected mailbox’s Drafts folder. It is not visible to the customer until an agent sends it from Outlook.
  • In automatic mode, the reply is sent immediately without agent review.
  • The draft or sent reply is attached to the existing email thread, so it keeps the subject line and threading intact.
  • It uses the connected mailbox, not an IrisAgent address.
  • The body is HTML formatted: the AI answer, followed by a bulleted list of the source links it drew from.
  • Any text you added around {{irisgpt.case.answer}} in the trigger is rendered alongside it.

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Guardrails

  • An AI answer is required. If there is no answer, IrisAgent does not create a draft or send an email.
  • One reply per email, per action. Once a trigger action creates a draft or sends a reply on a conversation, it will not run again on that same conversation.
  • Recent email only. IrisAgent evaluates triggers against a recent window of activity rather than reprocessing your entire mailbox history.

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Other variables you can use

Besides {{irisgpt.case.answer}}, the following are available in the reply content: If you have Custom APIs configured, you can also call them inline using {{action_name()}} to pull live data into the reply. Feel free to email us if you encounter any issues or require assistance setting up Outlook AI email replies.