Email Assistant

The Email Assistant connects a mailbox to one of your chatbots. ChatReact then automatically sorts incoming email into categories and — when your chatbot has the right instructions and knowledge — prepares reply drafts directly in your inbox.

Requirements

• ChatReact Professional plan or higher
• A chatbot with a filled knowledge base (the chatbot answers the emails, so it needs to know your business)
• A mailbox that is hosted at Microsoft — see the next section, this is the most common stumbling block

Which email addresses work?

This is important: it is not enough that an address shows up in your Outlook app. The Outlook app can display mailboxes from many different providers, but ChatReact connects to the mailbox itself — and that only works when Microsoft hosts the mailbox.

These work:

• ✅ Microsoft 365 business mailboxes (also called Exchange Online) — including addresses with your own domain, e.g. [email protected], as long as your email runs on Microsoft 365
• ✅ Personal Microsoft accounts — addresses ending in @outlook.com, @hotmail.com or @live.com

These do NOT work:

• ❌ Addresses that are only added to the Outlook app via IMAP/POP — e.g. a Gmail, GMX or web-hosting address that you read in Outlook. The mail itself is stored at the other provider, so Microsoft cannot grant ChatReact access to it.
• ❌ Gmail / Google Workspace (support is on our roadmap)
• ❌ Self-hosted Exchange servers (on-premises) that are not connected to Microsoft 365

Connecting your mailbox, step by step

Step 1: Open the Email Assistant

Sign in to ChatReact and click Email Assistant in the left sidebar. If the entry shows a lock icon, your current plan does not include the feature yet.

Step 2: Choose the chatbot

If you have more than one chatbot, pick the one that should answer this mailbox under Chatbot that powers this mailbox. Its knowledge base, instructions and personality (including formal/informal address) will be used for the reply drafts.

Step 3: Click "Connect Outlook"

You are redirected to the official Microsoft sign-in page (login.microsoftonline.com). ChatReact never sees your password — you enter it only at Microsoft.

Step 4: Sign in with the right account

This is the most common mistake: sign in with the mailbox you want to connect — not with your private Microsoft account.

• If Microsoft already shows a list of accounts, pick the correct one.
• If the mailbox is not listed, click "Use another account" and enter the address (e.g. [email protected]) and its password.

Whichever account you sign in with is the mailbox that gets connected.

Step 5: Accept the permissions

Microsoft shows which permissions ChatReact requests: reading your email, creating drafts, organizing folders and categories. Note what is not in the list — sending email. Click Accept.

Step 6: If you see "Approval required"

In many companies, employees are not allowed to approve apps themselves. Microsoft then shows a message like "Approval required" or "This app requires your admin's approval". That is a security setting of your company, not an error.

Two ways to solve it:

1. An administrator connects first: ask your Microsoft 365 administrator to go through these same steps once. On the permission screen they can tick "Consent on behalf of your organization" — after that, every employee can connect their mailbox without further approval. (If the admin's own mailbox gets connected in the process and that is not wanted, simply disconnect it in ChatReact afterwards — see below.)
2. Approval in the admin center: alternatively, the administrator opens the Microsoft Entra admin center, searches for the ChatReact app under Enterprise applications and grants admin consent there.

Afterwards, repeat the connection from Step 3.

Step 7: Done — check the result

You are redirected back to ChatReact and see the message "Mailbox connected successfully". Your connection card shows the mailbox address and the status Active. ChatReact also created a set of starter categories (e.g. To Respond, FYI, Newsletters & Marketing, Notifications, Suspected Spam) that you can rename, delete or extend at any time.

What happens after connecting

• ChatReact only processes email that arrives after the connection was made. Your existing inbox history is never touched.
• New email is picked up automatically every couple of minutes, categorized, and tagged or filed in Outlook.
• What happens to an email is decided by the actions of its category (see the next section).
• A reply draft is only created when all of these are true: the category has the Create reply draft action with its own instructions, drafting is enabled for the connection, the email is a genuine inquiry, and your chatbot's knowledge base actually covers the question. Otherwise ChatReact deliberately skips the draft — the Activity list always shows what was done and why.

Pausing organizing or drafting

Each connected mailbox has two independent switches on its connection card:

• Categorize & organize emails — turns automatic categorization and Outlook filing on or off
• Create reply drafts — turns reply drafting on or off

Turn either one off to pause that part of the Email Assistant for a mailbox without disconnecting it.

Categories: rules with actions

Every category is a rule made of two parts:

• When — the description decides which emails belong in this category. ChatReact sorts every incoming email into exactly one category. The more precise the description, the better the sorting.
• What — the actions decide what happens to these emails. They can be freely combined:

The actions always run in this order: tag → draft → move.

Instructions for reply drafts

The facts in a draft always come from your chatbot's knowledge base. A category's instructions describe how emails of that kind are answered: tone, structure, next step — and what the AI must not do (e.g. "never quote prices" or "never confirm an appointment").

• No instructions, no draft. The category then shows "Draft instructions missing".
• Insert template gives you proven instructions, e.g. for service inquiries, quote requests, appointment requests, support requests or job applications — adapt them to your needs.
• Optionally add an example reply. It is only used as a model for tone, length and structure; facts are never taken from it.

General rules for all drafts

Rules that should apply to every draft — and usually to the chat as well — are created under Knowledge Base → Instructions with Applies to: Chat + Email. The General rules for all drafts card on the Email Assistant page lists them. If a general rule and a category instruction conflict, the category instruction wins.

Setting up a signature

The Signature card lets you design the block appended below every reply draft — with logo, links and formatting. When you connect a mailbox, ChatReact automatically generates a default signature from your company data (company name, linked website and logo).

• Visual mode lets you edit the signature directly; the Image button inserts an image via URL or upload (uploaded images are automatically cropped, resized and compressed).
• HTML mode lets you paste an existing signature as HTML — including table layouts — with a live preview shown below the editor.
• Once a signature is set, the AI ends its draft with a closing line and leaves the sign-off to your signature.

Contacts: what the assistant remembers

ChatReact automatically builds a profile for every sender: name, company, customer status (Customer, Prospect, Supplier, etc.), whether they're addressed formally or informally, and individual noteworthy facts. This information feeds into every future reply draft — including choosing the right form of address for that contact.

Open Contacts to view and edit all profiles. Your manual edits always take priority and are never overwritten by the AI. You can also add internal notes, which are used as context for drafts but are never quoted directly.

Fixing common problems

Privacy

• ChatReact creates drafts only and cannot send email — the send permission is never requested.
• Access tokens are stored encrypted; email contents are processed transiently and not permanently stored by ChatReact. Only sender, subject and the categorization result appear in the activity log.
• Disconnecting a mailbox immediately deletes the stored access along with that connection's categories and activity log. Your emails in Outlook are never affected.