Summarise the documents people email you
Reads every document that arrives by email, logs a short summary of each in a Google Doc and emails you what came in.
Apps it connects
Authenticate each one once and the workflow is ready to run.
What it does
Each integration step this workflow runs, in order, what it is for, and the conditions and loops that decide when it runs.
- 1GmailNew email triggerWakes the workflow when new mail arrives, so a sweep of document emails not yet labelled can begin.
- 2GmailList emailsFinds inbox messages matching your search that carry attachments and do not yet have the processed label.
For each
message- 3GmailFind emailChecks that each message is the sender's newest in the inbox, since only that one's attachments can be opened.
- 4GmailDownload attachmentsDownloads the attachments from the sender's newest message so each PDF among them can be read.
For each
attachment- 5OpenAIQuery modelAsks the AI for a summary of at most three sentences written from the extracted answers alone, with no advice.
- 6Google DocsAppend textAdds an entry to your log document with the file name, the sender, when it was read and the summary.
- 5
- 7GmailAdd label to messageLabels each message once its documents are logged, creating the label if needed, so it is never read twice.
- 3
If
summarisedCountis more than 0- 8GmailSendEmails you one line per document read, with file name, sender and document kind, plus a link to the log.
- 8
How it works
What happens on each run, in plain English.
Whenever new mail arrives, the messages matching your search that carry attachments and have not been read yet are swept, each PDF attached is read, a short summary of it is written into a running Google Doc, and one email listing what came in is sent to you at the end.
Every document is asked the same questions: what kind it is, who issued it, who it is for, its date, reference, what it asks of you, any deadline and any total. The answers come from the document itself, and a question it does not answer is recorded as not stated rather than filled in. The summary is written from those answers and nothing else, and offers no advice. Each message is labelled once its documents are logged and the sweep skips anything already labelled, so nothing is summarised twice, and nothing is emailed when nothing arrived.
Before the first run you need a Gmail search that finds the mail carrying documents, a Google Doc to keep the summaries in, and your own address for the note.
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