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Every 10 minutes

Sort your Outlook inbox and get urgent emails on Telegram

New emails are labelled by topic, and the urgent ones reach your phone on Telegram with a one-line summary.

Runs
Every 10 minutes
Apps
Outlook, Telegram
AI
Yes, uses the built-in AI allowance
Access
Mail.ReadWrite; bot token

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every 10 minutes, sort my new Outlook emails into categories and send me the urgent ones on Telegram with a short summary.

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

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

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

A business owner who is out on site most of the day can't keep Outlook open, but some emails really can't wait until evening: a client with a problem, a supplier changing a delivery, a bank query.

Sorting every new email and sending only the urgent ones to Telegram means those few messages reach the phone straight away, while the rest are labelled and waiting for when there's time to sit down.

What you get out of it

  • Only what matters reaches your phone

    Newsletters and routine mail stay in Outlook. Your phone buzzes for the handful of emails that need you today.

  • A summary you can read in seconds

    Each alert says who wrote and what they want in one line. You can decide whether to deal with it now without opening the email.

  • An inbox that's already sorted

    Every email gets a category in Outlook. When you sit down, you can work through one topic at a time.

  • Fits how you work away from a desk

    Telegram is fast and quiet on a phone. It works on a patchy connection where a full mail app struggles.

How it works

What happens, step by step

  1. Every 10 minutes it looks for emails that arrived since the last check.

  2. AI reads each one and picks a category and whether it is urgent, with a one-line summary.

  3. The category is added to the email in Outlook.

  4. Urgent emails are sent to you on Telegram with the sender and the summary.

  5. It remembers the newest email it has seen, so nothing is handled twice.

Before it runs live

  • Connect Outlook
  • Connect Telegram

What you get

RunsEvery 10 minutes
Sort your Outlook inbox and get urgent emails on Telegramtoday, 9:00Succeeded
Telegram · Inbox bot❗ orders@northwind.example: delivery moved to Thursday, needs your OK on the new address today

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 and Telegram 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_triage_the_outlook_inbox_with_telegram_alerts.pyexample
GRAPH = "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0"
TG = "https://api.telegram.org"
from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, state, ai, report_fetched

MY_CHAT_ID = 123456789
SCHEMA = {"type": "object", "properties": {"category": {"type": "string"}, "urgent": {"type": "boolean"},
          "summary": {"type": "string"}}, "required": ["category", "urgent", "summary"]}

@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", "$select": "id,subject,from,bodyPreview,receivedDateTime"}).json()["value"]
    report_fetched(len(msgs))
    if not msgs:
        return {"summary": "Nothing new"}
    bot = f"{TG}/bot{credentials.secret('TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN')}"
    for m in msgs:
        r = ai.generate(f"From: {m['from']['emailAddress']['address']}\n{m['subject']}\n{m['bodyPreview'][:1500]}",
                        system="Categorise as Clients, Suppliers, Finance, Newsletters or Other. Urgent = needs action today. Summary: one line.",
                        json_schema=SCHEMA, max_output_tokens=80).json
        http.patch(f"{GRAPH}/me/messages/{m['id']}", headers=h, json={"categories": [r["category"]]})
        if r["urgent"]:
            http.post(f"{bot}/sendMessage", json={"chat_id": MY_CHAT_ID, "text": f"❗ {m['from']['emailAddress']['address']}: {r['summary']}"})
    state.set("since", msgs[-1]["receivedDateTime"])
    return {"sorted": len(msgs)}

FAQ

Common questions

How does it decide what's urgent?
You describe it in your own words, such as clients reporting a problem, anything from the bank, or deadlines today. The AI uses that description for every email.
Can it summarise PDF attachments?
It can include text from a PDF attachment in the summary. Scanned images without text are skipped.
Does it move emails out of my inbox?
No. It adds an Outlook category. You can ask it to move certain categories to folders if you prefer.
What permissions does it need?
Mail.ReadWrite; bot token. 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.

Set up “Sort your Outlook inbox and get urgent emails on Telegram” from your assistant

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