How to scan business cards into Outlook contacts with Power Automate and AI Builder

From the Power Automate home page, go to AI hub > Prompts and choose Build your own prompt. The templates are worth a look if you want to learn how good prompts are structured.

In the instructions, ask the model to extract these fields from the image and return them as JSON: full name, first name, last name, phone 1, phone 2, email, company name, job title, website, street, city, state, zip and country. Add a line saying that any field missing from the card must still be included with an empty string, because not every card has every detail.

Delete the document placeholder in the prompt text, click Add content and choose Image or document so the prompt takes a file input.

Leave the model on the default (GPT 4.1 in the video) or pick another. Under Model response, change the output from text to JSON so Power Automate can use each field directly.

Upload a sample business card image and click Test. After a few seconds you get clean JSON; fields that are not on the card come back empty. Rename the prompt to Business Card Analyzer and click Save.

Create an Instant cloud flow named Business card to Outlook with the Manually trigger a flow trigger. Click Add an input and choose File. Each time the flow runs, it asks for a file, and on the mobile app you can take the photo with your camera.

Add Run a prompt from the AI capabilities section and select Business Card Analyzer. For the image input, choose Enter the data from previous step, click See more under the trigger, and select the file content (contentBytes) of the uploaded file.

Add the Office 365 Outlook action Create contact (V2) and choose your Contacts folder.

Open Advanced parameters and add the fields you need: surname, mobile phone, email addresses, company name, job title, business home page, and the address fields (street, city, state, postal code and country or region).

For each field, choose Enter the data from previous step and pick the matching output from Run a prompt (use See more to find them all):

• Given name: first name
• Surname: last name
• Home phone: phone 1
• Mobile phone: phone 2
• Email addresses: click Add new item and map email to the address only
• Company name, Job title, Business home page: company name, job title, website
• Street, City, State, Postal code, Country or region: street, city, state, zip, country

You do not have to map every field. Keep the ones that matter for your contacts, then save the flow.

Click Test, choose Manually, click Test and Continue. Import a business card image and click Run flow. When it finishes, open Outlook Contacts, sort by recently added, and compare the new contact with the card.

Install the Power Automate app and sign in with your Microsoft 365 account. Open the flow, tap the file input and choose the camera (or pick an image from your gallery). Take the photo, tap Use photo and then Run flow. A few seconds later the contact appears in Outlook.