|

Overview

This project organizes incoming Outlook email for an internal business workflow. It detects message type from sender, subject, body, keywords, and AI classification, then routes each email to the right folder, department, or responsible person.

The system also forwards selected messages with attachment handling, posts Slack notifications, prepares approval-based reply drafts, sends morning calendar reminders, and reports daily category totals.

The private workflow keeps real email addresses, mailbox folders, credentials, Slack channels, and company-specific identifiers inside n8n. The public material will document only sanitized architecture and helper patterns.

The challenge

A shared mailbox can receive marketing, accounting, offers, meeting notes, customer-service topics, project topics, company-specific messages, spam, and normal replies in the same stream.

The challenge was to reduce manual sorting while still keeping responsibility clear. Emails needed to be moved, forwarded, summarized, or reviewed based on context instead of staying unread in one inbox.

My role

I built the n8n workflow architecture for Outlook email classification, folder routing, forwarding with attachments, Slack notifications, scheduled summaries, and approval-based reply handling.

I also separated the public explanation from the private workflow so the project can be reviewed without exposing mailbox content, real people, credentials, or internal addresses.

Workflow structure

Core modules

Technical decisions

Tech stack

Proof / Evidence

This case study is based on a private Outlook automation workflow. The public proof focuses on architecture, design decisions, and sanitized snippets. Original workflow exports, real email addresses, credential names, Slack channel IDs, mailbox data, and company-specific routing identifiers are not published.

Live system

Click to enlarge

Public code & documentation

Code excerpt: routing decision helper

The public snippets should show sanitized decision patterns only. The real workflow categories, addresses, folders, and private routing identifiers stay outside the public repository.

const CATEGORY_TO_ACTION = {
  accounting: "forward_to_accounting",
  offers: "move_to_offers",
  meeting_notes: "move_to_notes",
  marketing: "move_to_marketing",
  spam: "quarantine",
  unclassified: "notify_for_review",
};

function decideEmailRoute(classification) {
  const category = String(classification.category || "").toLowerCase();
  const confidence = Number(classification.confidence || 0);

  if (!CATEGORY_TO_ACTION[category] || confidence < 0.65) {
    return {
      action: "notify_for_review",
      reason: "Low confidence or unknown category",
    };
  }

  return {
    action: CATEGORY_TO_ACTION[category],
    reason: "Matched " + category + " with confidence " + confidence,
  };
}