Every 5 minutes

Hear in Slack when a top client emails

Emails from the clients you name, or with words you care about, show up in Slack within minutes.

Runs: Every 5 minutes
Apps: Outlook
AI: Not needed
Access: Mail.Read

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every 5 minutes, post to #clients in Slack when I get an Outlook email from anyone at northwind.com or contoso.com, with the sender and subject.

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 sales director has a handful of key accounts, her CEO and a recruiter she is waiting on, and their messages should never wait. But they arrive in an inbox alongside two hundred other messages, and Outlook's own alerts either ping for everything or stay silent. A reply from the biggest client sits unread for four hours while she is in a meeting, and the deal cools.

Every five minutes, new messages are filtered by sender, by sender domain or by words in the subject or body, such as contract, urgent or a project code name. Each match is posted to Slack with the sender, subject and a preview, and a record is kept so the same message is never posted twice.

It is good for executives, account managers, recruiters and anyone waiting on a specific reply.

What you get out of it

Key people reach you faster
A message from your biggest client appears in Slack within minutes, which means you can reply from your phone between meetings rather than hours later. That speed is often what separates winning a contract from losing it to a competitor who answered first.
Keywords catch what senders miss
Words like urgent, contract or a project code name can trigger an alert even from people not on your VIP list, which suits messages that matter because of their content.
No noise from everything else
Only matching messages are posted, so the alert channel stays quiet most of the time. That is why people respond quickly when something does arrive. That focus is the main difference between a useful alert and one that people mute within a week.
Deals and hiring are not delayed
Recruiting and sales both depend on fast replies. A candidate or a buyer who hears from you the same hour is more likely to stay engaged. The sooner you respond, the warmer the relationship stays, and the better your chances.
Works while you are away from Outlook
Slack on your phone is easier to check than a full inbox, so the alert follows you into meetings, on the train and out of the office. That flexibility is a real advantage if you spend more time out and about than at a desk.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Every 5 minutes, ClickRuntime checks your Outlook inbox for new emails since the last check, so each email is only alerted once.
It looks for emails from the clients you named, or with words you care about in the subject or opening lines.
Each match is posted to your #inbox Slack channel with the sender, subject and a link to open it in Outlook.

Before it runs live

Connect Outlook

What you get

RunsEvery 5 minutes

Hear in Slack when a top client emailstoday, 9:00Succeeded

Slack · #inbox📧 Northwind CEO: Urgent – contract renewal before Friday https://outlook.office.com/mail/…

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
Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
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.

vip_matching_search_alert.pyexample

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

VIPS = ["ceo@northwind.com", "ops@acme.com"]
WORDS = ["urgent", "cancel", "contract"]

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    since = state.get("since") or "2026-01-01T00:00:00Z"
    msgs = http.get("https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me/messages",
        headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {credentials.connection('microsoft', 'work')}"},
        params={"$filter": f"receivedDateTime gt {since}", "$orderby": "receivedDateTime asc",
                "$select": "subject,from,bodyPreview,receivedDateTime,webLink", "$top": 50}).json()["value"]
    report_fetched(len(msgs))
    if not msgs:
        return {"summary": "Nothing new"}
    hits = 0
    for m in msgs:
        sender = m["from"]["emailAddress"]["address"].lower()
        text = f"{m['subject']} {m['bodyPreview']}".lower()
        if sender in VIPS or any(w in text for w in WORDS):
            notify.slack(f"📧 {m['from']['emailAddress']['name']}: {m['subject']}\n{m['webLink']}", channel="#inbox")
            hits += 1
    state.set("since", msgs[-1]["receivedDateTime"])
    return {"matched": hits}

FAQ

Common questions

How do I define who counts as a VIP?

List email addresses or whole domains, such as everyone at a client company. You can include or exclude individual people, and the list is easy to update whenever your key contacts change. Updating that list later is quick, so it is easy to keep current.

Will I get an alert for every message in a long thread?

Each new message that matches is alerted once. In a busy thread, that could mean several alerts, and you can limit it to the first message of a conversation if you only want to know when a thread starts.

Can the keyword search include the message body?

Yes. Matching can look at the subject only or the subject and body. Searching the body finds more, but it can also match unintended words, so specific phrases and project codes work better than common words.

What permissions does it need?

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

Does it need AI?

No. It runs without AI, so it doesn't use your plan's 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 15 minutes