Connect Outlook

Connect a Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft 365 account and Chatlane becomes the shared home for your email support. You sign in once through Microsoft's secure window — no API keys or passwords to copy — and from then on Chatlane sends replies from your address and receives incoming mail alongside your other channels.

The part that used to be fiddly — setting up forwarding so incoming mail reaches Chatlane — now happens automatically when you connect. For most accounts there's nothing else to do.

How it works

Connecting does two things:

• Sending — Chatlane sends replies as your Outlook address using Microsoft's official Graph API. Threading, signatures, and attachments all work as normal.
• Receiving — During setup, Chatlane creates a rule in your mailbox that forwards incoming email to your inbox's unique Chatlane address (something like inbox-…@inbound.chatlane.io). You don't have to set that up by hand.

Chatlane never stores your password. The connection uses OAuth and refreshes itself, so you don't manage tokens or keys.

Before you start

• You must be an Owner or Admin of the inbox — channel setup is admin-only (see Roles and permissions).
• Have the Microsoft account you want to connect ready to sign in.
• If your account is a work/school Microsoft 365 account, note the caveat under If mail isn't arriving — some organisations block external forwarding by default.

Connect your account

1. Go to Inbox Settings → Channels.
2. Choose Add channel → Email → Outlook.
3. You'll be sent to Microsoft's sign-in window. Sign in with the account you want to connect.
4. Review and accept the permissions (see below), then approve.
5. You're returned to Chatlane and the channel is created. Chatlane sets up forwarding for you in the background.

Permissions Chatlane asks for

Microsoft will show you a consent screen. Chatlane requests only what it needs:

• Send mail as you — to send replies from your address.
• Read and write your mail — used once, during setup, to create the forwarding rule so incoming email reaches Chatlane. Microsoft doesn't offer a narrower "rules only" permission, so this is the smallest scope that can create the rule.
• Maintain access (offline access) — so the connection refreshes itself and you don't have to reconnect.

These are standard user permissions and need no special approval from Microsoft.

Confirm it's working

After connecting, open the channel's Overview tab and click Send test email. Chatlane sends an email to your Outlook address and watches for it to arrive back through the forwarding rule — usually within seconds. When it lands, you're fully set up — sending and receiving. (You can also just email your Outlook address from any other account.)

If the channel shows "Forwarding set up automatically", the rule was created successfully; the test send just confirms it end to end.

If mail isn't arriving

Almost always this is one specific thing: Microsoft 365 work/school accounts block external forwarding by default. This is a Microsoft security default (not a Chatlane setting) — Chatlane still creates the rule, but Microsoft refuses to deliver the forwarded message and bounces it with an error like 5.7.520 Access denied, Your organization does not allow external forwarding.

Personal Outlook.com accounts are generally not affected and work out of the box.

If you're on a business account and mail isn't arriving, you have two options:

• Ask your Microsoft 365 administrator to allow external forwarding to your Chatlane address. In Microsoft terms, this means allowing automatic external forwarding for your mailbox in the outbound spam policy (Microsoft Defender) or via a remote domain / mail flow rule in the Exchange admin center.
• Set up forwarding manually. Chatlane will show your inbox's forwarding address on the channel's Forwarding tab, with the exact address to copy. In Outlook: Settings → Mail → Forwarding → Enable forwarding, and paste the Chatlane address.

Chatlane detects this situation and automatically falls back to showing the manual instructions plus this admin note, so you're never left guessing.

Reconnecting an older Outlook channel

If you connected Outlook before automatic forwarding was available, that channel only granted permission to send. On its Forwarding tab you'll see a "Reconnect to enable auto-forwarding" button. Click it, approve the updated permissions, and Chatlane will set up forwarding for you. Until you reconnect, forwarding stays manual — nothing breaks in the meantime.

Shared & unlicensed mailboxes

Role addresses like careers@, hello@, or vendors@ are often shared mailboxes (they show as Unlicensed in the Microsoft 365 admin center — that's normal and correct; shared mailboxes don't need a licence under 50 GB).

The one-click Outlook connect doesn't work for a shared mailbox, because shared mailboxes have sign-in blocked by default — there's no interactive account to run the OAuth flow as. A plain unlicensed user with no mailbox can't be connected either (there's nothing to forward).

Instead, set it up like this — no licence and no OAuth required:

1. Get the Chatlane address. In Chatlane, create an email channel for this inbox and copy its forwarding address (inbox-…@inbound.chatlane.io) from the Forwarding tab — or use your own custom inbound domain if you've set one up.
2. Forward the shared mailbox to it (admin task). In the Exchange admin center, open the shared mailbox → Mailbox → Others → Email forwarding, and forward to the Chatlane address. Or via PowerShell:

   Set-Mailbox [email protected] -ForwardingSmtpAddress inbox-…@inbound.chatlane.io -DeliverToMailboxAndForward $true
   

   If the address is a distribution list or Microsoft 365 group rather than a mailbox, just add the Chatlane inbound address as a member (or allow it as an external recipient).
3. Send as the role address. Because you can't OAuth-sign-in as a shared mailbox, configure sending through a domain-authenticated channel — your custom inbound domain with SendGrid, or SMTP — rather than the Outlook connect.

The external-forwarding tenant policy still applies to shared mailboxes. If forwarded mail bounces with 5.7.520 Access denied, your admin must allow external forwarding — see If mail isn't arriving.

This "forward-in at the Microsoft 365 side, send-out via a domain channel" pattern is the recommended setup for any team role address, since it doesn't depend on a single user's licence or sign-in.

Disconnecting

Removing the Outlook channel (from the channel's Danger Zone) disconnects the account and removes the forwarding rule Chatlane created in your mailbox, so no mail is forwarded after you disconnect. You can revoke Chatlane's access at any time from your Microsoft account under Security → App permissions.

FAQ

Does Chatlane read my existing emails?
No. The read/write permission is used only to create (and later remove) the single forwarding rule. Chatlane receives new mail through forwarding, not by reading your mailbox.

Can I use my own domain in the forwarding address?
Yes — if your team has set up a custom inbound domain, your inbox can receive on your own branded address instead of the default inbound.chatlane.io one.

Personal Outlook.com vs. Microsoft 365 — which works?
Both can send. Automatic receiving works immediately on personal Outlook.com; on Microsoft 365 business accounts it depends on your organisation's external-forwarding policy (see above).

I only see options for SendGrid, Mailgun, or SMTP — where's Outlook?
Those are for connecting email with API keys. For a one-click sign-in, choose Email → Outlook (or Gmail). See Connect your channels for the full list.