Microsoft Outlook
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Papercrane
What's sitting unanswered in your Outlook shared mailbox right now?
Outlook shows read or unread, not answered or waiting. Papercrane's AI agent sorts support@ and orders@ with the categories your team already sees in Outlook, parks drafts for a person to send, and builds a live dashboard of volume, reply times, and what nobody has touched.
Connect in about a minute with your Microsoft sign in. Free to connect and ask. Paid plans start when you publish a dashboard. See pricing
Every shared mailbox owner knows these three moments
The one that got missed
Read means somebody opened it. Three days later the customer writes back, and the reply starts with an apology.
The number that doesn't exist
Someone senior asks for reply times on support@. Outlook has no report, so you count rows in an export and hope nobody asks again next month.
The quote for the exit
The shared inbox tools run $14 to $105 per person per month, and the reporting add ons start around $500. All that to leave the inbox your team already lives in.
One morning on support@, itemized
Here is the division of labor Papercrane sets up in a shared mailbox. Every action lands in Outlook itself, as categories, folders, and drafts your whole team sees.
Example morning
| What happened | Count | Done by |
|---|---|---|
| New messages arrived | 47 | your customers |
| Sorted with Outlook categories: Order status 19 · Invoices 11 · Returns 5 · Newsletters 6 | 41 | AI |
| Flagged for a person, now | 6 | AI |
| Moved to folders the old rules never caught | 9 | AI |
| Replies drafted, waiting in Drafts | 8 | AI |
| Drafts reviewed and sent | 7 | Dana, 9:40 |
| Sent without a person's review | 0 | off by default |
The agent only touches mail it hasn't processed before. Unattended sending ships off; if you ever want it (a daily digest, say), that is a switch you flip on purpose.
Ask the questions the mailbox can't answer
What's been waiting in orders@ for more than four hours?
What was our median first reply time on support@ this month, by weekday?
How many messages hit each mailbox this week, and how many still have no reply?
Are invoice questions in ar@ rising faster than the invoices we send from QuickBooks?
Every answer comes back as a chart on a live dashboard your team, or your boss, can keep open.
1. Approve the access you choose on Microsoft's consent screen, reading alone is enough to start
2. Point the agent at support@, orders@, ar@ by name
3. It sorts new mail into your categories and parks drafts
4. You get the live dashboard, your team stays in Outlook
No reply goes out without a person unless you deliberately turn that on. The default parks every draft in Outlook until someone on your team reviews and sends it.
Three ways to fix a shared mailbox, priced
| Move to a shared inbox app | Bolt on a reporting tool | Keep Outlook, add Papercrane | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Front, Missive: a new home for the mailbox | timetoreply: charts on top of the pile | AI triage inside Outlook, dashboard outside it |
| What it costs | $14 to $105 per person per month | From $34 per mailbox per month, 15 mailbox minimum | Free to connect and ask; paid when you publish a dashboard |
| What your team changes | Everyone learns a new tool; Outlook becomes the place you left | Nothing, including the triage: sorting is still by hand | One new habit: reviewing the drafts. Everything else lands in the Outlook they already use |
| Reply times and unanswered counts | Yes, in their app | Yes, that's the product | Yes, on a live dashboard you can share |
| Joins your other systems | Limited to their integrations | No | orders@ next to Shopify, ar@ next to QuickBooks |
Example setups
What teams point it at first
support@, sorted
Categories split order status from returns the moment mail arrives, and a waiting over four hours tile makes the Monday pile visible before it becomes a phone call.
orders@, joined
Where is my order volume charted against Shopify fulfillment lag shows whether the mail spike is the inbox's fault or the warehouse's.
ar@, drafted
Invoice copy requests arrive already drafted; the AR clerk reviews each one and presses send herself.
When you don't need us
If answering customers is your team's whole job, buy the tool built for that job: Front will stop two agents from typing the same reply in real time, give every conversation an owner, and its per seat price is fair for people who live in it all day. Papercrane is the right choice when your team answers a shared mailbox alongside their real jobs, wants to stay in Outlook, and is missing the sorting, the drafts, and the numbers.
Questions shared mailbox owners ask us
Shared mailboxes fill up because of other systems. orders@ makes sense next to Shopify, ar@ next to QuickBooks, and the morning summary can land in Slack.
Connect your mailbox and ask what's still unanswered. Tomorrow morning the categories are applied, the drafts are waiting, and a person presses every send.
Free to connect and ask. Paid plans start at publishing. See pricing
Papercrane
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