Use the Office 365 Outlook activity to send an email with Outlook

The Office 365 Outlook activity in Data Factory for Microsoft Fabric lets you send emails using your Office 365 account. You can customize the message with dynamic expressions.

Prerequisites

Make sure you have the following:

• A tenant account with an active subscription. Sign up for free.
• A created workspace.

Add the Office 365 Outlook activity to a pipeline

Follow these steps to use the Office 365 Outlook activity in a pipeline:

1. Create a new pipeline in your workspace.

2. Search for "Office 365 Outlook" in the pipeline Activities pane and select it to add it to the pipeline canvas. Depending on your browser window width, you might need to expand the activities list or look for the Outlook icon without a label.

   

3. Select the new Outlook activity on the canvas if it isn’t already selected.

   

Refer to the General settings guide to configure the General settings tab.

Configure the Office 365 Outlook activity

To set up the Office 365 Outlook activity:

1. Add a connection to your Outlook activity at the top of the settings. You can create a new connection or use an existing one.

   Note

   • If you’re using user authentication and deploying the pipeline with the Outlook or Teams activity to another workspace, the activity will be inactive in the target workspace until you create a new user authentication connection there.
   • If you don't have access to the connections used in the Outlook activity, the initial deployment will fail. To troubleshoot, you can edit the target pipeline and change the authorization or set the activity to inactive.
   • The content being sent from the email will be sent from your account.

2. Provide details for the email, including recipients, subject, and body. You can also add advanced details like a custom "from" address, CC and BCC recipients, sensitivity, and a custom reply-to address. All fields support dynamic expressions.

   

Share and reuse email functionality with Office 365 Outlook activity

The Office 365 Email activity enables pipelines to send notifications and automated messages using an authenticated connection.

In collaborative development scenarios, teams may need to reuse email logic across multiple pipelines and users. However, email connections are currently scoped to individual users and are not designed for direct sharing across authors.

To support reuse and consistency, you can adopt a pipeline-based composition pattern that centralizes email functionality. Instead of duplicating email configuration across pipelines, create a dedicated pipeline responsible for sending emails, and invoke it from other pipelines.

1. Create a reusable email pipeline

   Define a pipeline that encapsulates all email-related behavior:

   • Configure the Office 365 Email activity
   • Establish the required connection
   • Validate the pipeline independently

   This pipeline acts as a reusable service for email delivery.

   

2. Enable shared access through a pipeline connection

   Create and configure a pipeline connection that can be used by multiple users to invoke the email pipeline via the Manage Connections and Gateways portal in Fabric.

   • Grant access to developers or teams who need to send emails
   • Ensure permissions align with your organization’s security policies

   

3. Invoke the email pipeline from other pipelines

   In downstream pipelines:

   • Add an Invoke Pipeline activity
   • Select the shared connection
   • Reference the reusable email pipeline

   This allows pipelines to trigger email sending without managing their own connections.

   

4. Parameterize for flexibility

   To support different use cases, define parameters in the email pipeline such as:

   • Subject
   • Message body
   • Recipients
   • Dynamic content inputs

   Passing parameters at runtime enables reuse while preserving customization.

Limitations

In some cases, deployments that rely on service principal authentication (for example, Azure DevOps–based CI/CD workflows) may not execute this pattern successfully.

Known limitations

• The Outlook activity will be inactive when using CI/CD.
• The Outlook activity does not support WI or SPN.

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