When mail arrives

The Outlook step that waits rather than sends. Put Outlook's mail received trigger at the start of a workflow, choose the connected account, and every new message in its inbox becomes a run.

How it works

Connect the mailbox

Connect your Outlook account under Connections if you have not yet. See Connecting accounts.

Add the trigger step

Drag the mail received step onto the canvas as the first step and choose the account.

Build what happens next

The message is the step's output, read by the next steps with variables such as {{mail_received.data.subject}}.

What the step hands on

Field	What it holds
`subject`	the subject line
`from`, `fromName`	the sender's address and display name
`to`	who it was addressed to
`preview`	the first line or so of the body
`body`	the full body
`receivedAt`	when it arrived
`hasAttachments`	whether it carries attachments; the Outlook attachment steps fetch them
`webLink`	a link that opens the message in Outlook
`raw`	the whole message as Microsoft returned it

Waiting is not a machine left running. Microsoft tells VisualAutomate when mail arrives, with a regular check as a fallback, so a workflow that waits for mail costs nothing until a message does.

One message, one run

Each new message starts its own run with that message in hand. Ten messages that arrive together are ten runs, each with its own log, so one bad message cannot stop the others.

Examples

Sort an inbox. Classify each message with an AI step, then move it, reply to it or forward it, one route per category.
Process attachments. Save every PDF that arrives to the file store, extract the fields with an AI step, and add a row to a sheet.
Escalate. Post to Slack when a message from an important sender arrives outside working hours.

Pair it with a seen before? step from key-value state when a workflow must never handle the same message twice, even if it is moved back into the inbox.