Spotting the job worth automating first
Identification, not building. How to find the repeated task that will pay you back, so the first workflow you build is the right one.
Watch
What it does
What to look for
Same message, different customer
Anything you type from memory more than twice a week is the first candidate. Look in your sent items for the repeats.
Jobs done at a fixed moment
A task that always follows the same event — after a booking, after an invoice — is one a trigger can catch exactly.
The one you keep forgetting
A step you skip when busy costs more than one you do slowly. Those are worth automating before the tedious ones.
How it works
How to find it
- Look through last week's sent messages for anything you wrote twice.
- Write down what event came before each one.
- Pick the one with the clearest event and the most repeats.
- Automate that single thing, and leave the rest until it works.
Worth knowing
Worth knowing
- Some repeated work should be fixed rather than automated. If you are chasing the same missing detail, ask for it earlier.
- Not every repeat is worth it. A task done twice a month rarely repays the hour of building.
- Automating a job you do badly makes it happen badly, on schedule.
Related
Related
Workflow automation
What a workflow can and cannot do, once you have picked one.
Building a workflow
The canvas where you build the one you chose.
Email campaigns
If the repeated job turns out to be one email to many.
Find one repeat
Log in, read last week's sent messages, and find the one you typed more than twice.