Every 10 minutes

Have reply drafts ready for customer questions

Routine customer questions get an AI-written reply saved in Drafts, ready for you to check and send.

Runs: Every 10 minutes
Apps: Outlook
AI: Yes, uses the built-in AI allowance
Access: Mail.ReadWrite

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every 10 minutes, look at my new Outlook emails, and for any customer question about pricing or delivery, write a draft reply and leave it in Drafts.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

Add to ChatGPT Add to Claude

First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

A customer support lead and two colleagues answer the same kinds of questions all day: where is my order, how do I reset my account, can I get a quote for fifty units. Each reply takes three or four minutes to write well, and when the inbox fills up, answers slip from a few hours to the next day. Customers who wait too long start to chase, and the chasing emails add to the pile.

Every 10 minutes, new messages are fetched from Outlook and ClickRuntime's built-in AI decides whether each is a routine question it can answer. For those, it writes a reply in your tone and saves it as a draft in the same thread. Nothing is sent: the draft waits in your Drafts folder for you to check, adjust and press send.

It works best for roles with repetitive written correspondence, such as support, sales enquiries, recruiting and office administration.

What you get out of it

Replies start from a good draft
Opening a reply that is already written and mostly right is much faster than starting with an empty window. Most routine answers need only a glance and a small tweak before sending.
Response times fall
When drafts are waiting each time you open Outlook, you can clear a queue of routine questions in one short session. Customers hear back in hours, which lowers follow-up chasing.
Tone stays consistent across the team
Each draft follows the same style guidance, so replies from three colleagues sound like one company. That is difficult to achieve with people writing from scratch under pressure. That matters because customers judge a company by how consistently it sounds and behaves.
You stay in control of what is sent
Because drafts are saved and not sent, nothing reaches a customer without your review. A wrong or awkward answer is caught before it can damage trust. The safety of reviewing first is the reason many cautious teams are comfortable trying it.
Complicated messages stay human
Only emails that look routine receive a draft. Sensitive or unusual messages are left for you, so your time goes to the cases where judgment matters. That keeps the human attention on conversations that need empathy, negotiation or an exception.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Every 10 minutes, ClickRuntime checks your Outlook inbox for new emails since the last check.
AI reads each one and decides whether it is a routine customer question your FAQ answers.
For routine questions, AI writes a reply and saves it in your Outlook Drafts as a reply to the original email.
Everything else is left alone, and nothing is sent until you check the draft and send it yourself.

Before it runs live

Connect Outlook

What you get

RunsEvery 10 minutes

Have reply drafts ready for customer questionstoday, 9:00Succeeded

Outlook · DraftsRe: Where is my order? – Hi, orders ship within 3–5 days; yours left our Acme warehouse yesterday…

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.

Your own rules
Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.
Any number of apps
One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.
AI where it helps
Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.
On a schedule or on each event
Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

Act only on the items that match your own rules, and skip the rest
Change what the AI looks for, or how it writes the result
Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
Combine it with other Outlook steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.

ai_draft_replies_to_incoming_mail.pyexample

from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, state, ai, report_fetched

GRAPH = "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0"
FAQ = "Shipping takes 3–5 days. Returns within 30 days. Support hours 9–5 UK time."

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    h = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {credentials.connection('microsoft', 'work')}"}
    since = state.get("since") or "2026-01-01T00:00:00Z"
    msgs = http.get(f"{GRAPH}/me/mailFolders/inbox/messages", headers=h, params={
        "$filter": f"receivedDateTime gt {since}", "$orderby": "receivedDateTime asc",
        "$select": "id,subject,bodyPreview,receivedDateTime", "$top": 20}).json()["value"]
    report_fetched(len(msgs))
    if not msgs:
        return {"summary": "Nothing new"}
    drafted = 0
    for m in msgs:
        out = ai.generate(f"Subject: {m['subject']}\n{m['bodyPreview']}", system=f"If this is a routine customer question answerable from: {FAQ} – write a reply. Otherwise set routine false.",
                          json_schema={"type": "object", "properties": {"routine": {"type": "boolean"}, "reply": {"type": "string"}}}, max_output_tokens=300).json
        if out["routine"]:
            draft = http.post(f"{GRAPH}/me/messages/{m['id']}/createReply", headers=h).json()
            http.patch(f"{GRAPH}/me/messages/{draft['id']}", headers=h, json={"body": {"contentType": "Text", "content": out["reply"]}})
            drafted += 1
    state.set("since", msgs[-1]["receivedDateTime"])
    return {"drafted": drafted}

FAQ

Common questions

Does it ever send emails by itself?

No. It creates drafts in Outlook and leaves them for you. Sending is a manual step, which means you can read, correct or delete each draft before anything goes out under your name. You can also forbid specific promises, such as refunds or delivery dates.

How does it know the facts to put in a reply?

It writes from the incoming message and the guidance you give it, such as your policies, standard answers and price lists. It cannot look up orders or accounts unless you connect those sources, so drafts may need details added.

Can it skip certain senders or topics?

Yes. You can exclude internal colleagues, known contacts, specific subjects or any message that mentions words like legal, complaint or refund, so those never get an automatic draft. Excluding those topics keeps risky threads fully manual.

What permissions does it need?

Mail.ReadWrite. Nothing else in your accounts is used.

Does it need AI?

Yes. It uses ClickRuntime's built-in AI, so you don't need an OpenAI or Anthropic key. Every plan includes a monthly AI allowance.

How many runs does it use?

One run each time it checks. Checks that find nothing new and stop right away aren't counted.

Can I change how it works?

Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

Every 10 minutesAI