Outlook Integration

Installation

Go to Settings > Email integration, or open Outlook email in the right hand panel of your workspace to connect your Outlook account to Sunsama. Once in your settings page, click "Add Outlook account".

Currently, Sunsama only allows you to integrate one Todoist account at a time.

If you have multiple Outlook accounts, select the one you want to integrate first. You can add more Outlook accounts later.

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Outlook Calendar

Connecting your Outlook email does not automatically connect that Outlook's account’s calendar. To connect or manage your Outlook calendar, go to your Calendars page from the main dropdown menu.

Opening emails in Superhuman rather than Outlook

If you use Superhuman as your email client, you can have Sunsama open your Outlook emails in Superhuman rather than Outlook.

Go to Workspace Settings and click "Manage" next to Outlook. You'll now see a setting called "Custom email client" with a dropdown allowing you to select "Superhuman".

Now when you open an email within Sunsama, whether that email is in your task list or the integration panel, it will open in Superhuman rather than the default email client.

Browsing and importing emails

Open Outlook in the right hand panel to use the integration (keyboard shortcut Shift O)

Use folders, focus, and filters to view the relevant set of emails you wish to browse and import into Sunsama.

Folders:
Select which folder you want to view the emails of.

Focus:
Click on the focus to toggle between your All, Focused, and Other views in Outlook.

Filters:
Use filters to narrow the set of emails you wish to see. Select one of the following to view those emails:

• All
• Unread
• Flagged
• Attachments - shows emails that contain an attachment in the email thread
• Already imported into Sunsama

Importing tasks

When you import an email from Outlook into Sunsama, the newly created Sunsama task’s title will be the subject of the email. There are three ways to import from the Outlook integration:

• Drag and drop the task from the Outlook panel into your Sunsama task list.
• Click on the email in the Outlook panel and click “Add to today” or select a specific date for the task.
• To timebox the task directly, switch to calendar view (keyboard shortcut tab) and drag and drop the email directly onto your Sunsama calendar at the time you plan to work on it. This will add the task to that day in Sunsama and create a working session on your calendar.
• Pro-tip: merge an email directly into your daily recurring task for triaging your inboxes, if applicable. See this in action here.

Interacting with imported emails

Outlook email details

The embedded details from Outlook in the Sunsama task will show the thread and conversation of emails. Within these embedded details, you can browse and collapse the emails in the thread.

You can also take several actions on the email in Outlook:

• Open in Outlook (shortcut S)
• Delete
• Archive
• Mark as unread
• Flag

Interacting with Sunsama specific task information

Your associated Sunsama task acts like a worksheet for your Outlook email. Inside your Sunsama task, you can add notes, time tracking information, subtasks, and comments, all of which will not sync back to Outlook. Use your Sunsama task to track the minutia of the task itself.

Keeping Gmail in sync with Automations

To add automations, click on the Automations tab at the top of the Outlook panel.

The automations you select will apply only to the Outlook account you are currently viewing.

Import and Completion Automations

There are various actions you can have Sunsama automatically take upon importing the email or completing the task in Sunsama. Click on an action to select it. You can select multiple automation actions.

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Show Prompt

With the "Show Prompt" setting toggled on, a prompt will pop up upon importing and/or completing an Outlook email allowing you to select which specific automation action to take for that email. Use this setting if you plan to take different actions on a per-email basis.

Troubleshooting and FAQ

Does Sunsama work with self-hosted Exchange servers?

In general, Sunsama does not have support for on-premises or self-hosted integrations as this creates many unique issues we do not have the capacity to support at this time. If your organization hosts Outlook on-premises, you may not be able to integrate your Outlook email.

Microsoft's documentation is very unclear on this point as well.

We have customers with hosted Exchange servers that can integrate with Sunsama, while we have others that can't. The reasons for not being able to vary, like the Exchange server versions being too old and not supporting the latest Microsoft Graph API, or some security setting that prevents the API from properly accessing the data.

One thing that is common to all that work, is that they login with a Microsoft account (meaning that they can login at login.live.com, for example), even with a hosted exchange server (which isn't used for authentication, but for emails/calendars, etc.).

Can I open emails in Superhuman rather than Outlook?

Yes. Change your email client to Superhuman by going to your Settings and navigating to the Email page.

Do the actions I take on the email in Sunsama happen in Outlook?

Yes, if you "Delete", "Archive", "Mark Unread", or "Flag" an email within Sunsama, that action is taken on the email in Outlook.