Skip to content

Daily

Send a daily topic digest to subscribers in an Excel list

Each subscriber in your Excel list gets a daily email digest of news on the topics they chose, sent from your Outlook.

Runs
Daily
Apps
Microsoft Excel, Outlook
AI
Yes, uses the built-in AI allowance
Access
Files.Read, Mail.Send

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every morning at 7am, read my Subscribers table in Excel. For each topic, fetch the latest headlines from my RSS feeds, write a short digest with AI, and email each subscriber the digests for their topics from my Outlook.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

A trade association sends members a daily news round-up on the topics they care about: regulation, prices, technology. A staff member reads the news, writes the round-ups and sends them to each group. It takes most of the morning.

Writing one digest per topic and sending each member the topics they chose keeps the service going in a fraction of the time, with the member list kept in Excel as before.

What you get out of it

  • Each member gets what they asked for

    Subscribers get only the topics listed against their name.

  • Hours saved every day

    One digest per topic is written automatically and reused for everyone who follows it.

  • The list stays in Excel

    Adding or removing a subscriber is a change to the table, nothing more.

  • Sent from your own address

    Members reply to you as usual.

How it works

What happens, step by step

  1. Every morning, ClickRuntime reads the subscribers and their chosen topics from your Excel table.

  2. For each topic, it collects the latest headlines from your RSS feeds.

  3. AI writes a short digest for each topic.

  4. Each subscriber is emailed the digests for their topics from your Outlook address.

Before it runs live

  • Connect Microsoft Excel
  • Connect Outlook

What you get

RunsDaily
Send a daily topic digest to subscribers in an Excel listtoday, 9:00Succeeded
Email · Daily briefingRegulation • New packaging rules for Acme Region come into force in March (link) • Northwind Port updates customs forms (link)

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.
  • Your own rules

    Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.

  • Any number of apps

    One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.

  • AI where it helps

    Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.

  • On a schedule or on each event

    Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

  • Run it at a different time, more or less often, or only on weekdays
  • Change what the AI looks for, or how it writes the result
  • Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
  • Combine it with other Microsoft Excel and Outlook steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.
daily_ai_newsletter_to_subscribers_in_excel.pyexample
import feedparser
from clickruntime import on_trigger, http, credentials, ai

def graph(method, path, **kw):
    r = http.request(method, "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0" + path, headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {credentials.connection('microsoft', 'work')}"}, **kw)
    return r.raise_for_status() or (r.json() if r.content else None)

def send_mail(to, subject, text):
    graph("POST", "/me/sendMail", json={"message": {"subject": subject, "body": {"contentType": "Text", "content": text},
          "toRecipients": [{"emailAddress": {"address": a}} for a in to.split(",")]}})

BOOK = "/me/drive/items/your-workbook-id/workbook"
FEEDS = {"regulation": "https://www.example.gov/news.rss", "prices": "https://www.example.com/markets/feed"}

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    rows = [r["values"][0] for r in graph("GET", f"{BOOK}/tables/Subscribers/rows")["value"]]
    digests = {}
    for topic, url in FEEDS.items():
        entries = feedparser.parse(http.get(url).content).entries[:15]
        if entries:
            digests[topic] = ai.generate("\n".join(f"{e.title} {e.link}" for e in entries), system=f"Write a 5-bullet digest of today's {topic} news, "
                                         "each with its link.", max_output_tokens=400).text
    sent = 0
    for name, email, topics in rows:
        parts = [f"{t.strip().title()}\n{digests[t.strip()]}" for t in str(topics).split(",") if t.strip() in digests]
        if parts:
            send_mail(email, "Your daily briefing", f"Hi {str(name).split()[0]},\n\n" + "\n\n".join(parts))
            sent += 1
    return {"sent": sent}

FAQ

Common questions

How do subscribers choose topics?
Each row has a topics column, such as "regulation, prices". Change it and their next digest changes.
Where does the news come from?
From the RSS feeds you list for each topic, such as industry news sites and blogs.
How many subscribers can it handle?
Hundreds comfortably. Microsoft 365's sending limits are far higher, but for large lists a dedicated email service is a better fit.
What permissions does it need?
Files.Read, Mail.Send. Nothing else in your accounts is used.
Does it need AI?
Yes. It uses ClickRuntime's built-in AI, so you don't need an OpenAI or Anthropic key. Every plan includes a monthly AI allowance.
How many runs does it use?
One run each time it runs (daily). Checks that find nothing to do and stop right away aren't counted.
Can I change how it works?
Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

Set up “Send a daily topic digest to subscribers in an Excel list” from your assistant

Copy the prompt above, or connect your assistant first. Free plan, no credit card.