Outlook: connecting your mailbox and calendar

Signed in? Ask Lovelio this question inside the app - it answers from this same page.

Summary

Agencies on Microsoft Outlook can connect each consultant's own mailbox to Lovelio. Once connected, email that consultant sends or receives lands on the matching candidate and client records, and interviews booked in Lovelio go on their Outlook calendar. Google agencies keep Google Calendar exactly as it is; Outlook is a separate connection for Outlook agencies.

Signing up with Microsoft

On the signup page, choose "Continue with Microsoft" with your Microsoft 365 work account. Confirm your name and agency name. No Lovelio password is required.
Personal Outlook, Hotmail and Live accounts cannot create a workspace. Personal Microsoft accounts invited into a work tenant are also refused.
An active team invitation joins the existing agency with the role your admin assigned. Existing members open their workspace.
Signup confirms your identity only. Connect your mailbox and calendar separately in Settings when you want those features.

Where the card is

Settings, Integrations shows one email and calendar card, the one for the mail system your agency runs on. Lovelio works that out from how you signed up, from what a colleague has already connected, or from your email address, so there is nothing to switch on and nobody to ask.
If it shows the wrong one, use the "I use Outlook instead" link under the card. If Lovelio genuinely cannot tell, it asks once, in one line, and remembers the answer for the whole agency.
Each user connects their own mailbox. Nobody can connect a mailbox on someone else's behalf, and one person's connection never reads another person's mail.

Connecting

Settings, Integrations, the Outlook card, "Connect Outlook". You sign in with Microsoft, approve access, and land back in Lovelio with the card showing Connected as your address.
New agencies are offered the same button once, on the Connect your mailbox screen straight after the welcome reveal. "Skip for now" is remembered, and the home page then carries one line saying email goes out from hello@lovelio.ai until a mailbox is connected, with the link to this card.
The mailbox must be the same email address you sign into Lovelio with. Connecting a different mailbox is refused on the spot, the access is dropped straight away, and the card tells you which two addresses did not match. Sign in with the mailbox that matches your Lovelio login and try again.
Lovelio never sees your Microsoft password. You approve access at Microsoft, and Lovelio holds the resulting access encrypted. Disconnecting destroys it.

Email capture

Email capture is a choice on the card: "Capture my email" or "Do not capture my email". With capture on, Lovelio reads your sent and received Outlook mail and files each message on the candidate or client contact whose email address matches. With it off, Lovelio never reads your mail. It is only about mail: your calendar syncs either way, so turning capture on never costs you the calendar and turning it off never stops it.
Capture starts from the moment you turn it on. Older mail in the mailbox is never read or imported. Turning capture off and on again starts a fresh window from the second time; it does not reach back to the first.
Both directions are captured: mail you send from Outlook (any device, any mail app) shows as Sent on the record, and mail you receive shows as Received. Each entry on the timeline says "via Outlook" so you can tell it apart from mail Lovelio sent for you.
Only mail that matches a record is kept. A message where nobody on it (sender, To or CC) is a candidate or client contact in your agency is dropped and never stored. Colleagues on your own email domain never count as a match.
One email to several matching people lands on each of their records.
A message Lovelio already sent through its own mail (a submission, an interview invite you sent from Lovelio) is never filed twice when your Outlook also sees it.
Attachments show by name and size on the entry. They are not copied into Lovelio.
Capture runs in the background from a notification Microsoft sends when mail arrives or leaves. A message usually appears on the record within a minute.
System email Lovelio sends (invites, confirmations, automations, anything no person wrote) still goes out through Lovelio as before, never from your mailbox.

Sending from your own mailbox

With capture on, every email you write in Lovelio (a candidate email, a spec, a float, a submission, a reply from the timeline) is sent from your own Outlook mailbox. It appears in your Outlook Sent Items, the candidate sees your address as the sender, and their reply lands in your Outlook inbox and on the record in Lovelio, once. The timeline says "from your Outlook" on those entries.
Capture switched off, or no Outlook connection, means nothing changes: Lovelio sends the email for you as it always has.
Suppression still applies. An address that bounced, complained or unsubscribed is skipped whichever way the mail would have gone.
Outlook gives no delivery receipt, so an email sent from your mailbox stays at Sent. If the address is bad, the non-delivery report Microsoft sends to your inbox is picked up, the message on the timeline turns to Bounced with the report's subject, and the address is suppressed.
If Outlook needs reconnecting at the moment you send, the send stops and tells you "Outlook needs reconnecting. Reconnect Microsoft in Settings and send again." It is never sent from a Lovelio address in your place, because the person receiving it would see a stranger's address and it would likely land in spam. Reconnect from the Outlook card and send again. Attachments over 25 MB in total stop the send the same way: that is Outlook's own limit, so remove some and send again. Automated emails (reminders, rejections) are the exception: those go through Lovelio when your mailbox cannot carry them, and the record says so.
Open and click tracking does not exist for either route. Lovelio never tracks opens.

Interviews on your Outlook calendar

Every interview you are the interviewer for goes on your Outlook calendar the moment it is booked, from any door (the booking form, Ask Lovelio, the candidate's self-scheduling link, the API). The candidate and the interviewer are on the invite, so Outlook sends the invitation email itself. Reschedules and cancellations in Lovelio update or remove the Outlook event and Outlook tells the attendees.
Video interviews booked in Lovelio ask Outlook for a Microsoft Teams link and store it on the interview, the same way Google agencies get a Google Meet link.
Meetings, calls and other diary events you add in Lovelio go on your calendar too. Selected guests receive an invitation email.
Free/busy checks when booking read your Outlook calendar, so a clash with something already in Outlook is flagged before the invite goes out. If Lovelio cannot read your calendar at that moment it says so and does not guess.
Availability checks support both Microsoft work accounts and personal Outlook.com accounts. Recurring and all-day busy appointments block booking slots; free, cancelled and declined events do not.

Calendar sync direction

Two-way sync (recommended): interviews Lovelio books go on your Outlook calendar, and changes made in Outlook flow back to Lovelio. Drag the interview to a new time in Outlook and the interview moves in Lovelio, with the same timeline entry and candidate email a reschedule in the app produces. Delete the event in Outlook and the interview is cancelled in Lovelio, with the cancellation side effects a cancel in the app fires. The reason on the timeline reads "Moved in Outlook" or "Cancelled in Outlook". Only the start time matters; shortening or lengthening the event in Outlook changes nothing in Lovelio.
One-way sync: Lovelio puts interviews on your calendar and never reads changes back. Anything you change in Outlook stays in Outlook only.
A change Lovelio itself made never bounces back as a change. Lovelio remembers the calendar's own last-modified stamp on every write and ignores any notification that is not newer than it.

Calendar appointments and client meetings

Calendar > New event creates a meeting without requiring a candidate or a client. It appears on your connected calendar.
To meet a client without a candidate, choose Meeting, link the client contact, and tick Invite beside their name. Only selected guests receive invitations.
Two-way sync imports appointments made in the connected calendar, including invitations sent to candidates and client contacts. Matching guests link to their Lovelio records.
Client interviews also appear on the booking recruiter's connected calendar. That diary entry does not make the recruiter an attendee.
Booking sends the provider's invitation email. The recipient's calendar settings decide whether an invitation starts as tentative. Lovelio never accepts on their behalf.
Interview confirmation pages have Google Calendar and Outlook Calendar buttons, plus a downloadable calendar file.
Background sync recovers missed notifications and retries future appointments that did not export. Reconnect in Settings > Integrations if the connection needs attention.

Reconnecting

If Microsoft drops the connection (a password change, an admin revoking access), the card shows "Outlook needs reconnecting" and nothing syncs until you click Reconnect. Nothing already in Lovelio is lost.

Disconnecting

"Disconnect" on the card removes Lovelio's access at the provider first, then marks the connection closed. Lovelio stops reading the mailbox and calendar straight away. Emails and events already in Lovelio stay where they are.