Automation
Intermediate
17 min
Doing to assisting to automating — and why you must not skip a stage
The problem
You build an automation for the weekly report. Week two, the export format changes. Week three, you realise the summary needs a section you had not thought of.
The workflow
1Do it manually
2Assist with AI
3Run four times clean
4Map the six parts
5Place the approval gate
6Build
7Test on a copy
★Monitor
What you need
Workflow: every Monday, pull the weekend WhatsApp field notes, summarise for the director, send. Runs with AI: 6.
The tool
Google Apps Script
The prompt
Subscribers. The full prompt is part of the SMEMinds AI Playbook. See plans.
What comes back
1. READY — yes.
Verify before you use it
Human review required. Check every line below before this leaves your screen.
- The message-count line is the single most important design element here. Add it before anything else.
- Solve the input step before building. If WhatsApp export cannot be automated cleanly, the whole automation may not be worth it.
- The payback is genuinely marginal. Be honest about whether 6.5 hours a year justifies four hours of build plus maintenance.
- Keep the draft gate even though it is internal. Thirty seconds is a cheap insurance against the attribution failure you already experienced.