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Microsoft Admin Approval

What to do when connecting Microsoft 365 shows "Need admin approval" — grant consent yourself in a minute, or hand it to your IT admin.

When you connect a Microsoft 365 work account, you may see:

Need admin approval. alfred_ needs permission to access resources in your organization that only an admin can grant.

This is not an error. Your company manages email through Microsoft Entra (Azure AD) and has turned off self-service app consent, so an administrator has to approve alfred_ once for the whole organization. After that, you and your coworkers connect normally and never see the screen again.

There are two paths. Pick the one that fits.

If you’re the admin (or your own IT)

You can approve alfred_ for your organization without opening the Azure portal.

  1. Go to get-alfred.ai/admin-consent and choose Microsoft 365 / Outlook.
  2. Enter any work email from your organization. We use it only to look up your Microsoft tenant.
  3. Review the permissions and click Grant Admin Consent.
  4. Sign in with an administrator account and approve.

You’ll be returned to alfred_. Everyone on your team can now connect.

Approve with your work administrator account, not a personal Microsoft account that happens to share the same email. The page forces a fresh sign-in for this reason — if you see a personal account pre-filled, switch to your organizational one.

If you’re not the admin

You don’t need to learn anything about Entra. Send your IT admin (or whoever manages your company’s Microsoft 365) this link:

get-alfred.ai/admin-consent

You can copy this message:

Hi, I’m using alfred_ to manage my email and calendar, and connecting it needs a one-time admin approval for our Microsoft 365 organization. Could you approve it here: get-alfred.ai/admin-consent? It takes about a minute and only requests the access an email and calendar assistant needs. Once it’s approved I can connect on my end. Thanks.

As soon as they approve, return to alfred_ and connect your account. No second approval needed.

What gets approved

alfred_ requests only what an assistant needs:

  • Read and send email — triage your inbox and draft replies you approve
  • Read and write your calendar — see your day and schedule on your behalf
  • Read your contacts — know who you’re talking to
  • Read your basic profile — identify which account is yours

alfred_ does not request admin rights, cannot change organization settings, and cannot read other employees’ mailboxes. Consent goes through Microsoft’s standard OAuth and can be reviewed or revoked any time in Entra → Enterprise applications → alfred_.

Personal accounts don’t need this

Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live, and Gmail accounts aren’t managed by an organization, so there’s no admin to approve anything. Connect them directly. The approval screen only appears for managed work or school accounts.