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Daily Inbox Priority Scan

Surface the 3–5 emails that actually need your attention today without reading everything.

The prompt
Every weekday at 8:30 AM, scan my Outlook inbox for emails received in the last 24 hours. Identify the 3–5 that most need my attention today based on:
- Explicit requests directed at me that have not been answered
- Deadlines or time-sensitive items mentioned
- Senior stakeholders or external contacts waiting on a response
- Threads where I was the last to speak more than 48 hours ago

For each one, give me: sender, subject, one-sentence summary of what they need, and suggested action (reply, delegate, defer). Do not send anything — deliver as a list to me only.

How to use it

  1. 1Select Copy the prompt above.
  2. 2Paste it into Microsoft 365 Copilot.
  3. 3Replace anything in brackets with your own detail, then send it.

Copilot gathers and drafts. You verify and decide. Check every figure, name and date against the system it came from before you act on it.

Written for

Manager, Executive, Anyone with a high-volume inbox

More for Copilot Cowork: Agentic Workflows

See all 28 prompts

From the source collection in awesome-microsoft-copilot-prompts, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.