Every morning, one of my colleagues had the same time-consuming task.
She would open a Google Sheet tracker, check the latest status of different tasks, and then manually follow up with people in a Slack channel. The messages were usually simple: What’s the update? Which tasks are pending? What’s done? What needs attention today?
It sounds small, but doing this every morning added up. She estimated that this routine took around one to two hours each day.
So I looked at the workflow and realized the problem wasn’t the tracker itself. The data was already available in the Google Sheet. The real issue was that she had to manually read, summarize, and post the same kind of update every day.
To solve this, I helped set up a simple automation using Google Apps Script and Slack. Without knowing any python, simply with claude.
We created a dashboard tab inside the existing tracker sheet. This dashboard pulled together the key information: pending tasks, completed tasks, and tasks that were expected to be worked on next. Then, using Apps Script, we connected that dashboard to Slack so the update could be posted automatically in the channel every morning.
Now, instead of my colleague manually checking the sheet and nudging everyone one by one, Slack posts a clear tracker summary directly in the channel.
The message tells the team what is pending, what is done, and what is coming up. Everyone gets the same visibility at the same time, and my colleague can start her morning with higher-value work instead of repetitive follow-ups.
The best part was that this was not a huge engineering project. It was a small automation built around an existing workflow. All using few shot prompts.
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