Outlook Assistant v3.7.0 — Inbox Rules That Actually Match What You Mean

What’s new in v3.7.0#

I rewrote manage-rules. The old version handled the basics — create a rule, list rules, reorder, delete. But anything beyond “if subject contains X, move to folder Y” was either impossible or required reaching past the abstraction. v3.7.0 takes the rule builder to the level Outlook power users expect.

Conditions you’d actually use#

Twelve condition types, designed for the patterns you build in the Outlook GUI without thinking about it. containsSubject now takes comma-separated keywords with OR logic — write "invoice, receipt, payment" and it matches any of them. bodyContains and bodyOrSubjectContains extend that to the message body. sentOnlyToMe, sentCcMe, sentToMe, isAutomaticReply cover the routing-by-recipient-shape patterns that don’t fit a keyword search. importance and sensitivity are enums so the agent can route on the metadata Outlook already attaches.

Actions you’d actually use#

Nine action types. The old set of move / copy / forward / categorise / delete was technically valid but didn’t cover the common “silent triage” workflow — markAsRead so a newsletter drops out of your unread count without going to a folder. markImportance for the inverse — flag invoices as High without moving them. redirectTo differs from forwardTo in that the original recipient is preserved (mail forensics still works); useful for delegated mailboxes. stopProcessingRules is the missing primitive for chained rule logic — match this rule, do its actions, halt before the rest fire.

Rule exceptions#

Every condition has an except* counterpart. The classic case: route everything from billing@example.com to Finance, except when it’s a forwarded internal report. With v3.7.0 that’s except-from-internal: true on the same rule. Previously you’d write two rules and rely on order.

action=update + dry-run#

You can now modify rules without delete + recreate. Pass action=update, identify the rule by name or ID, and supply only the fields you’re changing — rename, toggle enabled, swap condition, add an exception. dryRun returns a human-readable preview of the resulting rule before anything commits to Microsoft Graph.

This is the version of manage-rules I should have shipped at 3.0. It took until 3.7 because I needed to actually use it for a few weeks before I noticed which conditions and actions were missing.