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It runs as a task pane beside the message, so a quote request never has to leave the inbox to get worked up. The add-in is deployed by your Microsoft 365 administrator and used by your sales team. It signs in with the same plastics.com account your team already uses.

Set it up

Requirements and install, for admins and end users.

Security and data

What leaves the mailbox and where it is processed.

Troubleshooting

Common failures and what to do.

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What the add-in does

The task pane has two working tabs: This email and Material Copilot.
When you open the pane on a message, Herman classifies the email and, when it is actionable, produces a structured workup:
  • Intent and confidence. Emails are classified as an intake reply, quote response, order question, RFQ reference, or unrelated, with a confidence percentage.
  • Customer block. Sender address, plus the account name when it is known.
  • Parsed request. Material, Grade, Processing method, Application, Volume, EAU (estimated annual usage), Ship to, and Need by, extracted from the email text.
  • Gaps. The fields that are still missing before the request can be quoted, shown as a completeness list.
  • Linked RFQ or order. If the thread is already tied to an RFQ, the pane shows the reference instead of the parsed request and pulls the live order detail.
Volumes render in imperial or metric depending on the unit setting in the pane’s settings menu.If Herman decides the email is not actionable, the pane says so and offers a Run workup anyway override, so you are never blocked by a misclassification. Switching to another message re-runs the workup automatically.
Herman detects the material mentioned in the subject and body, then resolves it against the catalog:
  • A concrete grade or trade name (including trademark-marked names such as a brand followed by a grade code) produces a single Grade match, plus similar cross-references.
  • A broader ask (a family, a brand, or a manufacturer) deliberately produces catalog candidates only, up to five. A broad ask is never promoted into a grade-level match.
  • Cross-references can be scoped to My catalog or All materials, and narrowed further with the filter drawer, which includes similarity preferences (exact matches, exclusions, and prioritized properties).
  • Each match carries a match reason and a citation so you can see why it was suggested.
For users in a merchant organization, each material row can show a target price, a floor price, and a lead time, plus a link to the underlying pricing options. You can open the pricing records drawer, apply a record, and set the quote price on the request. If the quote price falls below the floor price, the pane warns you. Applying a record that is tied to a warehouse also shows an inventory breakdown for that warehouse.Users outside a merchant organization do not see pricing.
Technical data sheets (TDS) and safety data sheets (SDS) held against a matched material can be selected in the pane and attached to the draft reply. Attachments are named after the material they belong to. Certification documents are listed for completeness but are not stored in the catalog yet, so they cannot be attached.
Two draft actions are available:
  • Draft reply, an acknowledgement of the request that folds in the applied quote price and lead time when you have set them.
  • Draft an info request, which asks the customer only for the fields listed as gaps. It appears only when there is at least one gap.
Drafts are generated by a language model in your organization’s configured intake voice. If the model returns an unusable result, the add-in falls back to a plain templated reply rather than failing.The draft, plus any documents you selected, is placed into an Outlook reply form for you to review. The add-in never sends mail on your behalf.
Convert to Customer RFQ turns the email into an RFQ, using the matched material and the parsed quantity, target date, processing method, and application. The original email is posted onto the RFQ so the context travels with it, and the thread is linked, so re-opening the same conversation later shows the RFQ instead of offering to convert it again.If the intake flow is enabled for your organization, converting also starts the intake agent. Once converted, the pane offers Go to Order, which opens the RFQ in your browser.Converting requires a merchant organization.
The Material Copilot tab is the full Herman chat, running inside the task pane, with the open message set as context. Use it for questions the workup does not answer, such as comparing candidate grades.
A Dashboard tab is visible in the pane but disabled and labelled as coming soon.

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Feature availability

Not everything in the pane is on for every account. Use this table when planning a rollout.
When the agentic capability is enabled, the pane replaces the manual draft buttons with Start Material Selection and agent approval steps, and document attachment controls appear only while an email draft is awaiting your approval. Approving an agent email draft also requires a connected Microsoft mailbox, and the pane prompts you to connect one if it is missing.