Grok Bot and Outlook: Microsoft 365, Teams and OneDrive

Grok Bot reaches Microsoft 365 through four plugins: Outlook, Outlook Calendar, OneDrive and Teams. Add the ones you need in Connect Apps, and set things up so that nothing is sent, posted or booked without your click.

#What you can hand over

Each of the four plugins is named for one Microsoft app and does a short list of things there. The drawing shows the four, with what each one reaches.

Those cover most of a working day in Microsoft 365:

• Draft the replies your inbox is waiting on, and leave them for you to send.
• Prepare tomorrow's meetings from your calendar, your mail and your files.
• Catch up on a Teams channel you've been away from.
• Propose meeting times, and book one when you say so.

SharePoint, Word, Excel and PowerPoint have no plugin of their own. The browser route covers them.

#Connect the Microsoft plugins

Each plugin takes a click in Grok Bot and a sign-in on a Microsoft page. Connect plugins covers how plugins work in general, and these are the Microsoft steps, shown with Outlook.

Outlook Calendar, OneDrive and Teams are added the same way, each from its own page. Outlook Calendar sits under Communication with Outlook, and OneDrive and Teams sit under Productivity. Adding Outlook doesn't add the calendar.

To connect a second Microsoft account, such as a personal mailbox beside your work one, look for Add Another Account on the plugin's page and give the account a label. Add a second account has the steps.

#Four jobs to hand over

Each of these reads or drafts, and none of them sends, posts or books.

Add one rule first, so a Bot that does try to send has to ask. In Settings, under Custom Rules, type send an email beside When Grok Bot wants to:, set It should: to Ask first and click Add Rule. Write a rule of your own shows the screen. Two of the jobs name a rule of their own, which you add the same way.

Then paste a message into a Bot's chat and change the parts in brackets. Start with the one that clears the most mail.

Look through my Outlook inbox for emails from the past two days that ask me a question I haven't answered. Draft a reply to each one and show me each draft before anything is sent. Where a reply needs a fact you don't have, leave [a gap in square brackets] for me to fill in. Don't send anything.

The second job uses three plugins together.

Set up a routine: every weekday at 4:30 PM, list tomorrow's meetings from my Outlook calendar. For each one, find the most recent email thread with the people invited, and any file in my OneDrive whose name matches the meeting's title. Post one note per meeting in this chat: who's coming, where the last thread left off, the files worth opening, and one question I should be ready for. Don't send, reply to or change anything.

The next two open with a click. The first reads Teams and writes nothing there.

Read what was posted in the [channel] channel of [team] in Teams since [day]. Give me three lists in this chat: decisions made, questions still open, and anything addressed to me. Say who wrote each item. Where something needs an answer from me, write a suggested reply here in this chat. Don't send or post anything in Teams.

The last job ends in a calendar event, so it carries a rule for that.

Look at my Outlook calendar for next week, Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Suggest three 30-minute slots where I have nothing booked, and draft a short email to [name] offering them. Show me the email as a draft. Don't create a calendar event until I tell you which slot they picked.

#What a Bot can and can't do in Microsoft 365

Every plugin works as the Microsoft account you signed in with, so it reaches what that account reaches and no more. Here is what that covers, app by app.

Connect Apps also lists Azure and Azure Cosmos DB. Those are developer tools, and they don't stand in for Outlook or Teams.

#When there's no plugin: SharePoint, Word and Excel

For a Microsoft app with no plugin, a Bot opens the app's website in the browser on its own computer, and you sign in there yourself. With a work account, look at that sign-in from Microsoft's side before you do it.

A work account's security can answer that second session in three ways:

• It signs you out of Outlook and Teams on your own computer.
• It locks the account.
• It refuses the Bot's sign-in.

So take the browser route in this order:

1. Use a plugin for everything a plugin covers. Mail, calendar, OneDrive files and Teams never need the browser. A plugin is approved once on Microsoft's own page and leaves no session open on the Bot's computer.
2. Check with your IT team first. Ask before a Bot signs in to a work account from a cloud computer.
3. Sign in yourself. When the Bot reaches the sign-in page it stops and posts a Computer card. Click Take over, sign in and do the verification step, then hand back. Do the human step yourself shows the card. The login stays on the computer for all your Bots.
4. If Microsoft refuses the sign-in, turn on Route traffic through this computer, so Microsoft sees your own connection. Route the Bot's browsing has the setting.

#Fix a Microsoft sign-in

Most Microsoft trouble is the work-account approval, in one form or another. Find what you see, then do what's beside it.

#Check you've got it

One check on the route that causes the most trouble.

Next, see what an approval card looks like and how to write more rules.

1. 6 October 2026
   First published.