6 automation ideas for Microsoft Office 365

If you’re one of the 50 million Microsoft Office 365 users, you know how well it plays with other Microsoft products. Once you step outside of the Microsoft universe, though, it can be challenging to make your go-to productivity suite work with other apps you use.

With Zapier, you can connect Microsoft Office 365 with other apps you use at work and set up workflows that will take care of routine tasks for you. You can create an automated workflow—we call Zaps—to help you keep calendars up to date, push deals along, and other things that eat up precious time. 

Using Zapier you can tailor Zaps to your work processes, or, if that feels overwhelming, you can use one of the suggested Microsoft Office 365 Zaps you’ll find in this article and get started quickly. 

Automation ideas for Microsoft office 365

Automatically contact new leads

If managing leads is a part of your job, you likely spend a lot of time making the first contact with a new prospect. You don’t want the lead to grow cold so you need to act fast, but how much value are you bringing every time you spend copying a template to send out? 

You can skip all that by using Zapier to send the initial outreach. These Zaps will automatically send an email from Microsoft 365 to a new lead no matter how they first contacted you. You can personalize the email step based on information in your form, referring to the lead by name and referencing any selections they made.

Want to make it look like it came from a real person? Try a delay step, available on our paid plans. Instead of automatically sending the email as soon as a new lead comes in, a delay will tell Zapier to wait for a specific amount of time first. Learn more about Delay by Zapier. 

Keep the sales process moving

Anyone who manages the sales process knows closing the deal requires constant encouragement. No matter what your sales process is like, you can let Zapier send nudges on your behalf. 

You can also use Zapier to send messages to potential customers when a deal in your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool moves to the next stage. 

If you need to book meetings regularly, you can use a Zap to send a personalized email once someone books a meeting with you through your appointment app. 

Send message from a spreadsheet

You can use spreadsheets for just about anything, like managing communications and tracking important business information, or even for creating games.

Sometimes you need to send an email based on information in a spreadsheet. For example, perhaps you draft communications to business partners in a spreadsheet to track outreach. Or maybe you use a spreadsheet to manage an internal project, so you need to know if there’s been a change in a particular column or a new row added.  

Instead of copying and pasting information or relying on default app alerts, you can try these Zaps, which automatically send an email from Microsoft 365 when there’s a specific spreadsheet change.

Track communications

It’s hard to keep track of email. You may miss an important message, or perhaps you skimmed an email and missed a crucial detail. 

Whether you need to stay on top of your work email or you and your team monitor a shared inbox, you can use Zapier to stay on top of it. These Zaps will automatically alert you in Microsoft Teams or another team chat app whenever you receive a new email. 

Need to pass along essential details from an email instead of forwarding it? An email parser may be the solution for you. The Zaps below will automatically send emails from your Microsoft 365 account with the parsed email message.

Update work and personal calendars

I’ve had way too many moments where I forgot to copy appointments from my personal calendar into my work account. It creates awkward situations when someone books a meeting with you, but you have a haircut. 

You can keep your calendars updated with a Zap that automatically copies calendar events into Microsoft 365 and vice versa. 

Automate reminders

Our brains can only handle so much—and that’s why reminders and to-do lists exist. If you often need reminder emails (or send them) regularly, Zapier can do that for you. 

Need reminders on a more specific schedule, say when a meeting comes up? You can use a Zap to create a to-do item or other preferred reminder method whenever there’s a new event on your calendar. 

If you work with tools not listed here, don’t worry! Head to our app directory to search for the one you use. And if it’s not available? If your app has webhook functionality, you can use webhooks with Microsoft 365 with these Zaps: 

Do more with automation

You don’t have to spend your workday attached to your email or calendar. When you pair Microsoft Office 365 with Zapier, you can count on automation to take care of the tasks that drag you down so you can focus on the work you care about most.