Using AI for email, meetings and documents day to day

Email: triage and replies

Long threads are where AI earns its keep. Asking an assistant to summarise a thread, list the decisions made and the questions still open, and say what is being asked of you takes seconds and can save several minutes of scrolling. Built-in assistants in Outlook and Gmail can do this without copying text into another tool.

For replies, give the tool your intent rather than asking it to reply in general. A prompt such as: reply accepting the revised delivery date of the 14th, ask them to confirm the site contact, keep it short and friendly, gets a usable draft. Always read it before sending, check names, dates and figures, and remove any phrasing that does not sound like you. Customers notice when every email suddenly sounds the same.

Email: what to avoid

Do not let an AI tool send emails on its own to customers or suppliers, and be cautious about features that auto-reply. Be careful with replies involving complaints, legal matters, pricing or commitments, where a small change in wording can create an obligation. Keep personal information out of tools that are not approved for it. Watch out for summaries of threads containing scam attempts. An assistant may faithfully summarise a fake request to change bank details as if it were genuine. The usual rule still applies: verify any payment change through a known phone number, not the email.

Meetings: notes and actions

AI note-takers in Teams, Zoom, Google Meet and standalone apps can transcribe a meeting and produce a summary with action items. This frees someone from taking notes and gives everyone the same record, which is particularly useful for internal project meetings and client calls where details matter later. There are some good habits to adopt. Tell participants the meeting is being transcribed, and get agreement from external guests; some clients will prefer not. Check the action list after the meeting, because speakers can be misattributed and names of products, places or people are often misheard. Decide how long recordings and transcripts are kept and who can access them, since they may hold sensitive discussion.

Meetings: preparation

Before a meeting, an assistant connected to your files and email can pull together the recent correspondence with a client, the latest proposal and open issues, giving you a one-page brief. For a standalone tool, paste in non-sensitive background and ask for likely questions or points to cover. This works well for sales calls, performance conversations, where it can help you structure your points but should not see the employee's personal file, and supplier negotiations.

Treat these briefs as a memory aid rather than a full picture, and open the original documents for anything you will rely on. After the meeting, the same assistant can turn the agreed actions into a follow-up email for attendees or tasks in your planning tool. That closes the loop that often fails in busy offices, where everyone leaves agreeing on next steps and nobody writes them down. A person should still confirm the list is right before it goes out, especially to clients.

Documents: drafting and reviewing

For new documents, give the assistant a structure, the audience and the key facts, and ask for a draft section by section rather than the whole thing at once. That keeps control in your hands and makes errors easier to spot. Assistants built into Word or Google Docs can draft from your existing files, such as turning meeting notes into a project update.

For reviewing, ask specific questions: does this proposal answer every point in the client's brief; which sentences are hard to understand; what has changed between these two versions. Assistants are good at spotting inconsistencies, missing sections and unclear wording, though they are not a substitute for legal or professional review of contracts and advice.

Making it stick

Short, practical training works best: fifteen minutes showing staff three or four prompts for their actual tasks, followed by a shared place where people post prompts that worked. Encourage people to say when the tool gets something wrong. Over a few weeks you find which uses save real time in your office, and which are not worth the effort. Keep expectations realistic. An assistant might save one person a little each day on email and much more on a long report, and very little for someone whose work is mostly on the phone. The value is in the specific tasks, not in a blanket rollout.