Effortlessly Summarize Long Emails with AI & Zapier

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Overview of the automation process
• Step 1: Setting Up Email by Zapier
• Step 2: Connecting OpenAI to Zapier
• Step 3: Adding the AI Prompt and Summary to Zapier
• Step 4: Sending the Summary to Slack or Email
• Advantages of Using AI for Email Summaries
• Potential Challenges and Limitations
• Future of AI and Email Automation
• Conclusion

How to Automatically Summarize Emails with AI and No Code Tools

Are You tired of spending countless hours sifting through your inbox only to find yourself lost in a sea of unimportant emails? Look no further. In this tutorial, we'll teach you how to use AI and No Code tools to automatically summarize all of your long emails.

Overview of the automation process

Our email summarization automation process consists of three simple steps. First, we send any email we want to summarize to a customized Zapier inbox that triggers the automation to run. Then, the automation sends a prompt to OpenAI for a summary of the email. Finally, we can send the resulting summary to Slack, another email, or anywhere else we'd like to get the output.

Here is how it runs when it's finished:

1. We forward an email to the Zapier inbox.
2. We wait just a moment.
3. We get the summary directly back.

Step 1: Setting up Email by Zapier

The first step is to Create a new Zapier app and choose "Email by Zapier" as the trigger. Using "Email by Zapier" will allow you to trigger the automation immediately whenever you forward an email. If you use Gmail or Outlook as the trigger, you'll have to wait 5-15 minutes for the automation to actually start. However, we don't build automations with AI Tools because we want to wait, so select "Email by Zapier" as the app for your trigger and "New Inbound Email" as the event.

Next, create a Zapier inbox where you'll forward any email you want to summarize. Give the inbox a name like "Summarize Bot" and copy the address to your clipboard. Send an email to the address and test the trigger.

Step 2: Connecting OpenAI to Zapier

In the Second step, we'll connect our OpenAI account to Zapier to use it for the summary prompt. To use this step, you'll need an OpenAI account with a payment method on file. If you don't have one, go to OpenAI.com and sign up for a new account.

1. Click on your profile in the top right corner and select "Manage Account".
2. Click on "Settings" on the left menu to get your Org ID, and under billing, you can add a credit card and set hard and soft usage limits.

To connect your OpenAI account to Zapier, click on API Keys under user on the left side of the screen. Create a new secret key and copy it for Zapier. Note that sending Prompts through the Zapier integration will incur a charge on your OpenAI account. That's why knowing the soft and hard limits are really helpful. The charges probably won't amount to much, but if you want to avoid getting charged during your testing and building of this automation, we recommend testing out the prompt that you want to use directly through chat GPT.

Step 3: Adding the AI Prompt and Summary to Zapier

Now that we have established OpenAI's integration with Zapier, it's time to add the AI prompt and summary to it. For our prompt, we'll stick with something simple:

• Briefly summarize the following email.
• Make a bulleted list of any action items required by the email.

Then, we'll insert the body of the email retrieved from the trigger. Once we test the step, we can see the summary in our inbox.

Step 4: Sending the Summary to Slack or Email

In our final step, we send the summary wherever we'd like it to go. For this tutorial, we'll just send the summary as an email back to the original sender. Add a new action and pick the email app that you use, like Gmail or Outlook or choose "Send Email by Zapier" as the action. Fill out the necessary fields to Compose your email. We set the to address as the address of the original sender from the trigger, and we add the AI-generated summary into the body of the email.

Advantages of Using AI for Email Summaries

AI is a powerful tool that can save you countless hours. By combining platforms like OpenAI with no code tools like Zapier, you can tear through a bloated inbox in a matter of minutes.

Potential Challenges and Limitations

While AI has immense potential, implementing it does come with potential challenges and limitations. For example, there may be discrepancies in language processing or cultural Context. Additionally, any automation could introduce unwanted errors or spamming.

Future of AI and Email Automation

AI is advancing at an unprecedented pace, and it will Continue to revolutionize our daily lives, including email automation. In the future, we may see AI tools becoming increasingly sophisticated and more widely integrated.

Conclusion

In conclusion, integrating AI and no code tools like Zapier can be an efficient and valuable way to handle the influx of emails. By creating this automated email summary, we were able to free ourselves from the monotony of inbox management and work more productively.

Highlights:

• AI and no code tools can be used to automatically summarize long emails.
• The automation process consists of three simple steps: email by Zapier, connecting OpenAI to Zapier, and adding the AI prompt and summary to Zapier.
• AI has immense potential benefits, but there may be challenges and limitations to consider.
• The future holds great promise for AI and email automation.