• Home

  • Automation with Zapier

  • Automation inspiration

Automation inspiration

2 min read

Use automation to stay organized and stress less at work

By Hannah Herman · April 13, 2020
automation-stay-organized primary img

Let's face it: staying organized at work is hard. But it's one of the best ways to keep your stress levels down. After all, if you know where everything is, you're less likely to forget about tasks until the last minute or lose an important file.

Automation can go a long way to helping you get (and more importantly, stay) organized at work. Here are a few ideas for using automated workflows (which we call Zaps) to store attachments, track starred emails, and more.

So what's Zapier? It's a tool that helps your apps talk to each other, so information from one app is automatically sent over to another app. See a demo of how it works.

Use automation to keep track of attachments

One of the easiest places to get disorganized is your inbox, especially if you receive a high volume of emails. It can be hard to hit inbox zero every day, much less keep track of emails that have important attachments.

Instead of trying to manually download and organize your attachments, you can use automation to save them to your favorite cloud-based storage system. Here are a few Zap templates—what we call our pre-made workflows—to get you started automatically saving email attachments to apps like Google Drive.

Save new Gmail attachments to Google Drive

Save new Gmail attachments to Google Drive
  • Gmail logo
  • Filter by Zapier logo
  • Google Drive logo
Gmail + Filter by Zapier + Google Drive

Save new Gmail attachments to OneDrive

Save new Gmail attachments to OneDrive
  • Gmail logo
  • OneDrive logo
Gmail + OneDrive

Save new Gmail attachment as a file in Box [Business Gmail Accounts Only]

Save new Gmail attachment as a file in Box [Business Gmail Accounts Only]
  • Gmail logo
  • Box logo
Gmail + Box

Save new attachments in Gmail to Dropbox

Save new attachments in Gmail to Dropbox
  • Gmail logo
  • Dropbox logo
Gmail + Dropbox

Tracking action items from email or your chat app

Sometimes you don't just need to respond to an email, you need to do something based on it. Instead of manually creating tasks in your to-do list for emails that require action, create an automated workflow that does the work for you. You can set up a Zap that automatically creates a task when you star, flag, or label the email. Here are a couple of examples of how this can work:

Create Trello cards from new starred Gmail emails [Business Gmail Accounts Only]

Create Trello cards from new starred Gmail emails [Business Gmail Accounts Only]
  • Gmail logo
  • Trello logo
Gmail + Trello

Create Trello cards from new labeled Gmail emails

Create Trello cards from new labeled Gmail emails
  • Gmail logo
  • Trello logo
Gmail + Trello

Add new starred emails to Todoist as tasks [Business Gmail Accounts Only]

Add new starred emails to Todoist as tasks [Business Gmail Accounts Only]
  • Gmail logo
  • Todoist logo
Gmail + Todoist

If you have emails that shouldn't be to-do list tasks but that you still want to hold on to, Zapier can save the emails to a spreadsheet for future reference. You can even customize the workflow to only save emails that meet certain criteria, like coming from a particular sender. These Zaps can get you started with this automation today:

Add new labeled Gmail emails to rows in Google Sheets

Add new labeled Gmail emails to rows in Google Sheets
  • Gmail logo
  • Google Sheets logo
Gmail + Google Sheets

Save new Gmail emails matching certain traits to a Google Spreadsheet

Save new Gmail emails matching certain traits to a Google Spreadsheet
  • Gmail logo
  • Google Sheets logo
Gmail + Google Sheets

You can also set up these workflows to use your favorite chat app instead of email. For example, Zapier can add starred messages in your chat app to your to-do list—or even add items when you respond to a chat message with a specific emoji.

One of our editors wrote a long list of all the ways you can do this, but these handy Zaps are a great jumping-off point:

Create Trello cards from new saved Slack messages

Create Trello cards from new saved Slack messages
  • Slack logo
  • Trello logo
Slack + Trello

Create Trello cards for new Microsoft Teams channel messages

Create Trello cards for new Microsoft Teams channel messages
  • Microsoft Teams logo
  • Trello logo
Microsoft Teams + Trello

Create Asana tasks from new Microsoft Teams team channel messages

Create Asana tasks from new Microsoft Teams team channel messages
  • Microsoft Teams logo
  • Asana logo
Microsoft Teams + Asana

Automate meeting follow-up

Staying organized after a meeting can be a particular challenge, especially if you're expected to collaborate on group tasks afterward. You can set up workflows to automatically move items from a group kanban board or your project management app to your personal to-do list.

You can also modify this workflow so that items are added to your list only when group tasks have a specific tag—such as your name or team—and use a second Zap to move or re-label the group task appropriately once you mark it as completed in your to-do-list.

Here are a couple pre-built Zaps that do just that:

Add Todoist tasks when tags are added to Asana tasks

Add Todoist tasks when tags are added to Asana tasks
  • Asana logo
  • Todoist logo
Asana + Todoist

Create Asana tasks from new or moved Trello cards

Create Asana tasks from new or moved Trello cards
  • Trello logo
  • Asana logo
Trello + Asana

Add new Trello notifications as Todoist tasks

Add new Trello notifications as Todoist tasks
  • Trello logo
  • Todoist logo
Trello + Todoist

Move Trello card when Todoist tasks are finished

Move Trello card when Todoist tasks are finished
  • Todoist logo
  • Trello logo
Todoist + Trello

If you want to be less stressed, you need to work smarter

For many of us, being less stressed at work won't happen because we suddenly have a lot less on our plates. If you're unorganized, even the lightest workload can feel incredibly stressful. That's why it's so important to use the tools you have—including automation—to keep track of what's most important.

Related reading:

  • New to remote work? Try these automated workflows.

  • 5 things you should automate today so you can stress less

  • Not sure when to automate a task? Start here.

Get productivity tips delivered straight to your inbox

We’ll email you 1-3 times per week—and never share your information.

tags

Related articles

Improve your productivity automatically. Use Zapier to get your apps working together.

Sign up
See how Zapier works
A Zap with the trigger 'When I get a new lead from Facebook,' and the action 'Notify my team in Slack'