AI Email Quality Platform

The client needed visibility into the written communication quality of their workforce, with no off-the-shelf solution covering both passive monitoring at scale and active in-context assistance within Outlook.

We opened in a business analyst role, running a discovery phase to map the client's existing infrastructure and develop a clear picture of what "good writing" actually meant in their organisational context.

Given their existing investment in Azure and Outlook, the path forward was natural: an Outlook add-in for employees, with the remaining analytical infrastructure built on top of Azure.

Before committing to the full build, we created a sandbox playground inside a Next.js site - giving the client a way to test the AI scoring engine (powered by Azure AI Foundry models) against real emails and iterate on the rubric until the ratings felt genuinely trustworthy. Only once the scoring logic had been validated did we move into full development.

The production system has two surfaces. The analytics dashboard exposes per-employee scoring, pass rate trends, and top and bottom performer rankings - fed by a passive email capture pipeline connected to Microsoft Graph API webhooks, with subscriptions kept alive via a Vercel cron job. The companion Outlook add-in brings the same capability directly into the inbox, accessible from a single ribbon button.

Rounding out the platform: invite-based user management with role-based access controls, mandatory 2FA, and Azure OpenAI token cost tracking to keep usage visible and accountable.

The Next.js dashboard is deployed on Vercel, the Outlook add-in on Render, and we supported the client through the full setup and configuration of their Azure app services.

• Acted across multiple roles throughout the engagement - business analyst, shared product owner, and developer - providing continuity from discovery through to delivery.
• Rolled out passive email monitoring across the organisation with zero changes to employee workflow.
• Delivered per-employee analytics with full drill-down into individual writing quality over time, with role-based access controls scoping admin visibility to their own groups.
• Brought previously invisible content issues to the surface by identifying recurring problems in email templates and signatures.
• Gave employees direct insight into their own writing through the Outlook add-in, including AI-assisted analysis and rewrite suggestions - without leaving their inbox.