Install
How to install Kerna in Outlook
Add an AI assistant to the Outlook you already use: sort the inbox, summarise a thread, get a reply drafted. Start on the free Starter plan, with no card. Below: what it needs, how to install it, and what to do first.
Opens the Kerna listing on Microsoft AppSource. Free Starter plan, no card needed.
Check it works with your mailbox
Kerna needs a supported mailbox and a supported Outlook. Thirty seconds here saves an install that would not have loaded.
A mailbox hosted by Microsoft
Microsoft 365, Exchange Online or Outlook.com. Kerna does not support accounts connected over POP or IMAP, or mailboxes that stay on an on-premises Exchange server. If you do not know where your work mailbox is hosted, your administrator can tell you whether it is on Exchange Online.
Outlook on the desktop or the web
New and classic Outlook for Windows, Outlook for Mac, and Outlook on the web. Outlook mobile is not supported.
Two ways to install it
Both end in the same place. Use whichever you are already in front of.
From Microsoft AppSource
If you are reading this in a browser, this is the shorter path.
- Open the Kerna AI Email Assistant listing on Microsoft AppSource using the button above.
- Choose to get the add-in and follow Microsoft’s prompts. Sign in with the account that owns the mailbox you want to use Kerna in — not a personal account you happen to be signed into.
- Open Outlook. Kerna appears among your apps, and opens in the side panel.
From inside Outlook
If you are already in your mail, you never have to leave it.
- In new Outlook for Windows, open More apps in the ribbon or the navigation bar, then Add apps. In classic Outlook for Windows and in Outlook for Mac the entry point is in the ribbon as well.
- Search for Kerna and select Add.
- Kerna opens in the side panel on the message you have open.
Start with a message you owe a reply to
Open it, and ask Kerna for a draft. The draft lands in your normal reply window, where you read it, change what you want, and send it yourself. Once you have seen it work on one message, run triage across the whole inbox and pick the categories that match your work.
What the free plan covers
- Starter is free at €0 with a monthly token allowance and no card to enter. A token is roughly a measure of how much text Kerna processes for you; the pricing page sets out the allowance on each plan.
- Kerna runs when you ask it to. It does not scan, index or monitor your mailbox in the background; it reads the message you are working on, at the moment you press a button.
- Kerna does not send mail. It writes a draft into your compose window, and the message leaves only when you read it and press Send yourself.
- If it does not suit you, remove the add-in the same way you added it and it is gone from Outlook.
Installing it for a team
A Microsoft 365 administrator can deploy Kerna centrally instead of leaving it to each person: in the Microsoft 365 admin center, Settings, then Integrated apps, then Add-ins, then Deploy Add-in — scoped to everyone, to specific users or groups, or to just themselves for a trial. Each person still signs in individually to link their own plan.
Try Kerna in your own inbox
Install the add-in and get your first reply drafted. Free to start, in the inbox you already use.