Send Notifications
- Team gets investigation summary, not raw alerts
- Context included automatically — they can act immediately
- Works with Outlook and Teams built-in, plus any MCP-enabled tool
The problem
Raw alerts tell you something is wrong without telling you what to do. You get "High CPU on prod-web-01" and then spend 15 minutes investigating before you can act.
How notifications work
Your agent investigates first, then sends notifications with context already included. Ask in chat: "Send an email to the team summarizing what happened with the checkout errors" — the agent formats findings, adds evidence links, and sends it.
Built-in channels:
| Channel | Connector | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Outlook | Office 365 Outlook | Send email, reply to threads, list inbox |
| Teams | Microsoft Teams | Post to channel, reply to threads, read messages |
Third-party tools via MCP:
Any tool with an MCP server can receive notifications. If your team uses PagerDuty, Slack, Jira, or another system that exposes an MCP server, connect it through an MCP connector. The agent discovers available tools automatically from the MCP server — no built-in integration required.
What makes this different
Unlike alert forwarding, your agent doesn't pass signals through unchanged. It investigates first, then notifies with context — root cause, impact, recommended action.
Unlike manual notifications, your agent formats findings professionally. You don't copy-paste between tools or summarize the same incident five times for different audiences.
Unlike runbook-driven escalation, your agent decides what to include based on what it discovered. If the investigation found a deployment caused the issue, that's in the notification.
Before and after
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Raw alert: "High CPU on prod-web-01" | Contextual summary with root cause and recommended fix |
| Copy-paste investigation notes into email | Agent formats findings as professional HTML |
| Manually post updates to Teams | Agent replies to same thread as issue evolves |
| Remember which channel gets which severity | Agent uses connected tools based on your request |
Email capabilities
The Outlook connector provides these tools:
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| Send email | Compose and send to any recipient with HTML formatting |
| Get email | Retrieve a specific email by ID (body truncated at 12,288 characters) |
| Reply to email | Continue existing email threads |
| List emails | Read message metadata from any folder (bodies excluded to prevent context overflow) |
| Move email | Organize messages into folders |
The agent formats investigation findings as professional HTML emails automatically. All email tools support shared mailboxes — specify an optional mailbox address to send from or read a shared inbox.
Attachments
The agent can send emails with file attachments. Total attachment size must be 5 MB or less across all files in a single email. The agent validates attachment size before sending and returns a clear error if the limit is exceeded.
Teams capabilities
The Teams connector provides these tools:
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| Post message | Send to a configured Teams channel |
| Reply to thread | Update an existing conversation |
| Get messages | Read recent channel messages |
Updates about the same issue stay in the same thread — your channels stay organized.
Teams messages must be formatted as HTML, not Markdown. The agent handles this automatically when composing messages.
Using notifications
Once you connect Outlook or Teams (Builder → Connectors), ask the agent directly in chat:
Send an email to oncall@contoso.com summarizing the investigation
Post to our Teams channel that the deployment rollback completed
The agent uses connected tools immediately — no custom agent required for ad-hoc notifications. For automated notifications triggered by scheduled tasks or incident response plans, configure the tools on the appropriate custom agent.
Setting up notification connectors
Before your agent can send email or post to Teams, add the appropriate connector in Builder → Connectors → Add connector. Both use OAuth sign-in — your agent sends notifications as the authenticated user.
| Channel | What happens after sign-in |
|---|---|
| Office 365 Outlook | Your agent can send email, reply to threads, and list inbox |
| Microsoft Teams | Your agent posts to the linked Teams channel |
For step-by-step setup instructions, see:
Your agent can have one Outlook and one Teams connector at a time. To change the sending identity, disconnect and reconnect with a different Microsoft account.
Best practices
| Practice | Why |
|---|---|
| Ask explicitly | The agent only sends notifications when you ask — it won't email unsolicited |
| Use scheduled tasks for digests | Collect findings and post once daily instead of per-alert |
Get started
| Resource | What you'll learn |
|---|---|
| Set Up Outlook Connector → | Connect Outlook to send emails and read inbox |
| Set Up Teams Connector → | Connect Teams to post channel notifications |
| Get Started: Automate Workflows → | Build automated workflows with notifications |
| Create a Scheduled Task → | Schedule recurring tasks that send notification summaries |
Related capabilities
| Capability | What it adds |
|---|---|
| Scheduled Tasks → | Schedule checks that notify your team |
| Workflow Automation → | Chain notifications with mitigations |
| Run Modes → | Control whether agent acts or reports |