Back to: Building AI Agents Without Coding: A Beginner’s Course
Project: Create an AI-powered workflow that automates a routine task. For example, imagine you get many customer emails daily – we can build a workflow to automatically summarize each email and text you the summary, so you prioritize responses. Or automate handling of form submissions by categorising them (sales lead vs support issue) using AI and routing them accordingly.
Tool choice: Zapier or Make.com are ideal for this, as they connect different services and now integrate AI steps. We’ll illustrate with Zapier for simplicity.
Steps to build an AI workflow:
- Pick a workflow to automate: Let’s do the email summarisation example:
- When a new email arrives in a Gmail inbox, have an AI agent summarise it and send the summary to a Slack channel or phone.
- This is practical for, say, a team mailbox or a student monitoring incoming info from a project partner.
- Set up Zapier and trigger: In Zapier, create a new Zap. Select Gmail (or whichever email service) as the trigger app, and “New Email” as the event. Connect your email account. This means any incoming email will kick off the automation.
- Add the AI action (OpenAI integration): Zapier has a built-in OpenAI or ChatGPT action. Add an action step “Format or Summarise text with AI” – Zapier might call this “Send prompt to OpenAI”. In the prompt field, you could insert something like: “Summarise the following email in 2-3 sentences, focusing on the key request or question, and use a polite tone.” Then you’d insert the email body content (using Zapier’s variables from the trigger) for the AI to process.
- Zapier Agents can even chain multiple actions: it could decide based on the summary what to do next, but to keep it simple, we’ll explicitly set the next step.
- Add an output action: After getting the summary from ChatGPT via Zapier, add another action. For instance, choose Slack (to send yourself or a group a message) or SMS (Zapier can send texts, or use another service like Twilio). The content of that message will be the AI-generated summary. So, whenever an email comes, you’ll get a Slack message like: “AI Summary: [Summary text]”.
- Test the Zap: Zapier allows testing each step. Send a sample email and see if the Zap triggers. The AI should return a short summary. Check that the summary is sensible. Adjust your prompt if needed (e.g., if it’s too short or missing details, you might say “include the sender’s name and suggested next action in the summary”).
- Turn on the Zap: Once satisfied, turn it on. Now you have an AI-enhanced personal assistant monitoring emails for you!
- Extend to other workflows: You can build many variants:
- Social media monitoring: e.g., when someone mentions your business on Twitter, use AI to analyze sentiment (positive or negative) and alert you if it’s a complaint.
- Data entry automation: e.g., when you receive a Google Form, use AI to extract key info or even draft a personalised email reply.
- Customer support triage: e.g., categorise support tickets by urgency or topic using AI keywords extraction, and assign to different people.
In all these cases, the pattern is: Trigger (some event) → AI action (process text or generate text) → Outcome (send notification, create document, etc). All done with no code, just configuring steps. Zapier’s new AI features allow non-programmers to build such multi-step agents easily, which is transforming how small organisations handle tasks.
Local relevance: Workflow automation with AI can hugely benefit small teams or solo entrepreneurs in Sydney. For example, an individual real estate agent could use automation to handle inquiries: when someone fills a web form to request a house viewing, an AI could draft a friendly email response with available slots. This saves time and lets the agent focus on in-person client work. Embracing automation is also a competitive advantage – a recent Australian survey showed about four in five small businesses are adopting some form of AI to boost productivity (e.g., using automations to streamline operations), . By learning to use tools like Zapier and Make, you equip yourself to help these businesses save time and money.