How to achieve inbox zero with Zapier Agents

I'm going to teach you how to use Claire Vo's Inbox Zero Agent template on Zapier Agents. Claire Vo is the creator of ChatPRD and host of the popular podcast How I AI. And so this is a template that is contributed by an expert in the community, but it's also an official Zapier template all over the world, I'll talk a little bit more about that when we get started. On this page, you can read about how the template works, if you'd like. I'm going to be going over all of the steps and showing you how to set it up as we move forward. One other thing is you can see the capabilities, which is essentially the different tools that you're going to connect for the agent to be able to work. And again, we're going to go through those, what they are, and how to set them up. So let's get started by clicking Use Template.

So then this next stage, whenever you use a Zapier Agents template, is really just a summary of the instructions that the agent's going to use. It is, this part is verbatim. The instructions you'll see on one of the next screens as we complete setup. You'll also notice a specific trigger that is connected to what activates the template. And then finally, I'll point out that this is an official Zapier template, like I said, and you can tell that by this little checkmark next to the word Zapier. And, uhm, there's nothing that you can do to change anything at this stage, so we'll go ahead and click Use this Template.

And now we're going to connect the accounts that are going to be a part of executing the functionalities of this template. So, first of all, I'm going to choose my connected Gmail account, we'll go ahead and use this one, as well as a Slack account, and we'll go ahead and use this one. And so for me, I've already used these. I've already accounts and set them up as part of the different Zapier automations I have set up, so it's really great if you've already connected apps in other parts of Zapier, you don't have to reconnect them here, but if you did need to connect them for the first time, there is an option to connect a new account for each of these two tools, and then also, or alternatively, you could use this widget here to connect a new account or even manage a your existing accounts. So now that I've connected those accounts, last thing I'll note is that you can connect or even change the accounts later in the setup if, if you change your mind or you add things after the fact. So this isn't the only opportunity you have to do that, it's just the initial setup. So I'm happy with this, and I'm going to click Create.

So now we're in the agent itself. This is the interface where you can interact with it, where you can change it, where you can test it, and there will be a different interface after you set it up to be able to use it, but we'll be able to see the functionality and make sure that it's working, making sure the template is set up the way that we want on this screen. So, once again, you've already seen this. You've seen these instructions in one of the prior screens, but let's go through them now so that you understand the logic behind how this agent works. So, essentially, whenever a new email arrives in your inbox, which is the first part of the instruction, and it's also the trigger, this Gmail new email tool, I'll take a moment here to talk a little bit about triggers.

There are a couple different triggers that are sort of common for Zapier agents. Many of these templates are set up around a specific trigger relative to the tools used in the agent, but another thing that you might notice if you click replace trigger are things like changing it to run on demand, certain agents run that way, running it on a schedule, You or triggering it via Zap. But let's go ahead and get our trigger back. So it's Google, it's Gmail. So we have to pull up the app and then we have to find that new email. And because I got out of it, I'll just get back into it by selecting the right account and clicking save. Okay. Okay, so now that that's done. Set up. You'll also notice that there are some tool calls in here. For example, Gmail, create draft, reply, Gmail, archive, email, and Slack, send direct message.

So, so that's a couple of different ways that tools get involved in executing the agent's instruction is first of all, potentially the trigger, but then the instructions itself. If you need to do an action or send data somewhere, then that needs to be reflected in these tools. And because I'm showing you a template, we don't really need to change anything here. That's just something to keep in mind as you build your own Zapier agents or as you customize Zapier agents. If you want to, you know, make slight changes to an existing template, for example. So let's get back to the instructions. When a new email arrives in your inbox, one, analyze the content of the email to determine if it requires a response or an action. Two, if the analysis indicates that a response is required, draft an appropriate response based on the email content in this tool, gmail craft create draft reply. Three, Thank If the analysis indicates that no response is required, archive the email and then using the tool gmail archive email for if the analysis is unsure whether response or action is required, send a direct message to you on slack asking for clarification using the slack send direct message tool.

The expected outcome is that emails are automatically processed. responded to if needed, archived if not needed, or flagged for your review via slack. Kind of the ideal personal assistant for dealing with emails. So, really quick before I show you how it works, one last thing I want to note about the trigger is that for any trigger besides on demand, and you. You have to automatically enable the agent when you're done testing and want to just use it, and you want it to take these actions based on that trigger. And then the other thing that I'll note to you is you might notice these little widget icons next to each of these tools, and you can kind of follow the logic and see how they're set up here.

In most cases, we're like, letting the agent select a value for each field that it's going through, and so that's, that's a really cool thing, I think, about Zapier Agents, is that you don't have to very strictly define logic, but you can if there are certain things you want to see, like, for example, if you were creating a draft and you wanted to share it with a member of your team, you know, who helps you with emails, for example, uhm, or with, with this Slack component here, you know, perhaps you want to customize the text, uhm, but you can also let the agent take the first stab at it, and so those are just ways that you can fine-tune the results of your workflows, but for the sake of this video, and this, and showing you how this works, we're not going to change anything, just so you can understand the baseline of how it works.

Alright, so at this point, we're going to test the agent. So in order to do that, we're going to click test agent. This is going to be essentially the same thing as running the agent live with the trigger that we've selected as the agent is working on its own in the background. around the major differences. are that there may be some steps that it asks you to approve before moving forward, but that is not characteristic of the live agent. It's just part of testing and working through each step to make sure that it's working the way you want before executing the full workflow.

So now it's testing the agent, and again, it's going through these steps. It's finding, an email, the most recent email, and then it's going to run through these different analyses. And one of these potential steps, whether it's creating that draft, archiving the email, or sending that Slack message. I think it's worth noting that all of these things are not extreme actions. It's creating a draft, but not sending it. It's archiving it, but not deleting it. And, you know, also the sort of, like, human in the loop with Slack when more information is needed, you know, human review is needed.

Okay, so we have our first step here to approve, and it's suggesting that we archive the email. It says, this email is a job alert newsletter and does not require a response or action. The next step is to archive it to keep your inbox organized. And, uhm, I can't see the nature of the message, but that makes sense because I know in my inbox I get different job alerts from different job boards and things like that. So, it says, and I'm gonna move myself for a minute here. Here's a preview. Does it look good? Is there anything you'd like to change? Uhm, we're gonna go ahead and approve it and I'll talk through it with you. And so now it is taking that action. And so there's some conditional logic here, essentially, right, in that there are these different steps. It's making that decision for you. But like I said, all of these actions are not extreme. And you get to review it. You have the opportunity to go back and look at workflow runs when it's running in the background.

So we've tested it and it's successful. So it says, don't forget to turn this agent on once you've finished setting up. Like I was mentioning with the triggers. So let's turn it on. And then I want to show you what it looks like. Just the difference between what you're seeing here and what you're and sort of the live view. So I'm going to click that activity button and then I can click new chat. Again, the trigger is automatic, so this chat is not necessarily going to let me test or let me show you what the live agent would look like, but it's something that you could do if the trigger was set to on demand. And you were interacting with it. So basically by turning on the agent, we know that it works and we can now view the activity of the different actions that it's been taking.

So with that, you are ready to use this template and to customize it how you want. You could change out different tools. you could customize it. You could some of those tool the way that the agent is making decisions or making your own decisions. You could take out steps if you wanted to. But I think this is a really flexible agent that, uhm, would certainly help me get to inbox zero. So I'm going to leave it on and see what magic it can work for my inbox and I hope that it helps you as well.