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Outlook extension

The Outlook extension lets Strata work with your Microsoft 365 mailbox — searching the inbox, reading messages and attachments, and drafting and sending email on your behalf, including with AI-generated attachments.

Note

Looking for Strata inside Outlook? That's a separate feature — the Strata for Outlook add-in, a task pane that runs in the Outlook window. Connecting the extension here also unlocks the add-in's full-mailbox actions.

Connect

  1. Open Settings, click the Extensions tab, and click the Microsoft Outlook row.
  2. Click Connect in the header.
  3. A Microsoft sign-in popup opens. Sign in with the work account whose mailbox Strata should use.
  4. Approve the requested permissions. The popup posts the result back to Strata, the tile flips to connected, and your account email shows in the Current session panel.

Permissions Strata requests

The OAuth flow asks for these Microsoft Graph scopes:

ScopeWhat it lets Strata do
Mail.Read, Mail.ReadWriteSearch and read messages in your mailbox; create and manage drafts.
Mail.SendSend a message on your behalf — only after you confirm a draft.
Calendars.ReadWriteRead and write calendar events.
Contacts.Read, People.ReadResolve recipient names and look up contacts.
Tasks.ReadWriteRead and write your Outlook (Microsoft To Do) tasks.
MailboxSettings.ReadWriteRead and write your mailbox settings (e.g. timezone, signature, automatic replies).
User.ReadRead your basic profile so the tile knows which account is connected.
offline_accessRefresh tokens silently when the access token expires.

Strata never sees your password. Access and refresh tokens are stored encrypted in the platform database, scoped to your user record, and dropped when you disconnect.

What the AI can do once it's connected

With Outlook connected, the AI gains a full set of mailbox tools. In chat, all of these are available once you connect — anything that sends or changes mail still goes through you (the AI drafts, you confirm). Inside an agent run there's no human at the keyboard, so the write/send tools are gated behind the send_email permission instead (see Permissions).

Read your mailbox

  • Search by sender, subject, keyword, folder, or date range, or by relevance (best for "find that email about X").
  • List your mail folders, read a full message, read several messages at once, or read an entire conversation thread chronologically.
  • Inspect the contents of an attachment — PDF, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, CSV, text, and images (images are read with OCR plus a visual description).
  • Look up someone's address from your contacts and people network, and validate recipient addresses before a send.

Compose and act

  • Draft, send, save as a draft, or schedule an email for a future time.
  • Reply, reply-all, or forward an existing message — threading is preserved.
  • Move a message to another folder, mark it read/unread, flag it, set importance, or apply categories.
  • Save and reuse email templates.

Drafts are always rendered as an email draft card with to, cc, bcc, subject, and body. The AI does not send automatically from chat — you confirm the draft first. Inside an agent run, an enabled send_email permission lets the agent send without a confirmation prompt, so only grant it to agents you trust. Prefer finishing in Outlook? The draft card's Open in Mail button hands the draft to your default mail client through a mailto: link, with recipients, subject, and body pre-filled. Cards that carry an AI-generated attachment show a separate Draft in Outlook Web button instead, and once Strata has saved the draft the card shows View in Outlook Web.

Try a prompt like:

  • "Find emails from Sarah in the last two weeks about the Q3 budget."
  • "Read the latest invoice from vendor X and tell me the total due."
  • "Draft a reply to John confirming Friday at 2pm."
  • "Generate an Excel of last month's sales and email it to alex@acme.com as 'September Sales.xlsx'."

Writing voice and signature

Your writing voice (Strata learning how you write from your sent mail, chats or documents) and your signature live in Settings > General > Personalization, not on the Outlook extension page. Connecting Outlook lets both use your sent mail: the voice can learn from it, and the signature can be found at the end of the emails you send. You can also type or edit a signature by hand there.

Calendar, contacts, and tasks

The same Outlook connection grants Calendars.ReadWrite, Contacts.Read, People.Read, and Tasks.ReadWrite — so connecting Outlook is a single act that covers the full Microsoft 365 personal-productivity surface, not just mail.

  • Calendar — list your events, check free/busy availability, create an event, update one, or cancel one.
  • Tasks — list your Microsoft To Do tasks, create a task, mark one complete, or update one.
  • Contacts and people — resolve a name to an address from your contacts and people network when you mention someone by name.

In chat, all of these work once Outlook is connected. Inside an agent run the read actions (listing events, checking free/busy, looking up a contact) work with any Outlook connection, while the write actions (creating or changing an event, creating or completing a task) are gated behind the send_email permission — the same gate that governs an agent sending mail — so an agent can only change your calendar or tasks if you've granted it that permission. Try a prompt like "What's on my calendar tomorrow afternoon?" or "Add a task to follow up with Alex on Friday."

Disconnect

Click Disconnect in the row's More menu. Strata drops the in-memory session immediately and deletes the stored extension token from the platform database, removing all Outlook tools from the AI's toolset on the next chat or agent run. To fully revoke the OAuth grant, also remove Strata under My Account > Apps and services > Apps that can access your data in the Microsoft 365 portal.

What can go wrong

  • The popup closes immediately with no result — your browser blocked it. Allow popups for the Strata origin and retry.
  • "Outlook access is disabled by your organization administrator." — the outlook extension has been removed from your org's allowed extensions. Contact your admin.
  • Popup says "Connection failed" — wrong account, denied consent, or your tenant hasn't approved Strata's app registration. Sign in with the right work account; ask IT if the app needs admin consent.
  • "No signature found" in Settings > General > Signature — nothing repeats at the end of your recent sent mail. Choose Type it myself and enter it.
  • A scheduled agent will not email its results to you alone — its results are already in your Strata inbox, so an unattended run does not send an email addressed only to your own address. In a chat, asking Strata to email something to yourself works.
  • Writing voice says "Not enough sent email to learn a reliable voice." — the distiller needs at least two usable messages. Send a few more substantive emails and re-try.
  • An agent with send_email enabled sent an email you didn't review — agent runs intentionally bypass the human confirmation step. Use errors-only notifications and tight tool sets for any agent that can send mail. See /docs/agents/permissions.

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