Creating a Microsoft Outlook Rule for M-Files

By utilizing Microsoft Outlook rules, you can easily automate saving specific kinds of e-mail messages to M-Files on the basis of, for example, the sender, subject, or recipient of a message. For instance, you can specify that all proposal messages that you send are to be saved to M-Files on the basis that the subject field contains the word proposal.
Note: These instructions are for Microsoft Outlook 2013. If you are using a different version of Microsoft Outlook, there may be minor differences in how rules are created.

Complete the following steps to create a Microsoft Outlook rule for M-Files:

Steps

  1. Open Microsoft Outlook and select an e-mail message that represents the type of message for which you want to create a rule.
    You can select the message and create the rule on the basis of, for example, the sender of the message, text in the subject field, or the recipient of the message.
  2. On the Home tab, in the Move section, click Rules and the select Create Rule... from the menu.
    The Create Rule dialog is opened.
  3. Click the Advanced Options... button.
    The Rules Wizard dialog is opened.
  4. Check the condition or conditions that an e-mail message must meet for this rule to be applied.
    For example, if you want to create a rule that applies to messages that are sent by the selected sender, check the from <sender> option check box.
  5. Optional: If necessary, click an underlined value in the rule description field to edit the rule condition.
  6. Click Next.
  7. Check the move a copy to the specified folder option check box.
    You can also move the messages themselves directly to M-Files so that they are deleted from Microsoft Outlook once they are moved, but the best practice normally is to move a copy of the message to M-Files, in which case the actual message remains in the original folder, such as the Inbox or Outbox folder.
  8. Click specified in the rule description field.
    The Rules and Alerts dialog is opened.
  9. Expand the M-Files node and then select the vault to which you want to move copies of messages that match this rule.
  10. Click OK to close the Rules and Alerts dialog and then click Next.
  11. Optional: If you need to make exceptions to this rule, check any exception check box that you want to be applied and edit the exception in the rule description field, if necessary.
  12. Click Next.
  13. In the text field, enter a descriptive name for the rule.
  14. Check the Run this rule now on messages already in... and Turn on this rule option check boxes and click Finish to finish creating the rule.

Results

The e-mail messages in Microsoft Outlook that match the rule that you have just specified are moved automatically to the selected vault in M-Files.
Note: If Microsoft Outlook is not open when you receive a message that matches this rule and would therefore be automatically saved to M-Files, M-Files will suggest that you Save pending messages now when Microsoft Outlook is opened the next time.
© M-Files Corporation 2016
Last updated 10/2016