Every 10 minutes
Turn emails that ask for something into Airtable tasks
Emails that ask you to do something become tasks in Airtable, with a clear title, a due date and a priority.
- Runs
- Every 10 minutes
- Apps
- Airtable, Gmail
- AI
- Yes, uses the built-in AI allowance
- Access
- Gmail gmail.readonly; Airtable write
Send this to your assistant
Create a ClickRuntime automation: check my Gmail every 10 minutes; if an email asks me to do something, create a task in Airtable with a title, due date and priority.
First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.
Why use it
Why teams use this automation
An office manager's inbox is where most of her work arrives: a supplier needs a form signed by Friday, a colleague asks for a room booking, the accountant wants last month's receipts. The requests are mixed in with newsletters and FYIs, and the ones that slip are the ones that cost money.
This automation reads new email, recognises the ones that ask for action, and adds them to your Airtable task table with a short title, a due date when one is mentioned, and a priority. Your task list fills itself from the inbox.
What you get out of it
Requests stop getting buried
A request that lands in a busy afternoon is captured as a task even if the email is scrolled past and forgotten.
Due dates are not left in the text
Deadlines written as 'by Friday' or 'end of month' become real dates on the task, so they can be sorted and reminded.
One list for everything
Tasks from email sit next to tasks you add yourself in Airtable, so planning the day happens in one place.
Only actionable emails become tasks
Newsletters, receipts and FYIs are left alone, so the task list does not fill with noise.
How it works
What happens, step by step
Every 10 minutes ClickRuntime checks your Gmail for new emails in your inbox.
Promotions and automated messages are skipped, and emails already checked are never checked again.
AI decides whether each email asks you to do something, and if so writes a short title, a due date and a priority.
A new task is added to your Airtable table with a link back to the email.
Before it runs live
- Connect Airtable
- Connect Google through your own Google app (a one-time, 10-minute setup), so it works with your own Gmail
What you get
Build your own
Need it to work differently?
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
- Act only on the items that match your own rules, and skip the rest
- 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 Airtable and Gmail steps into one automation
Under the hood
The code that runs this automation
from google.oauth2.credentials import Credentials
from googleapiclient.discovery import build
from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, ai, state, report_fetched
AIRTABLE_URL = "https://api.airtable.com/v0/appXXXXXXXXXXXXXX/Tasks"
SCHEMA = {"type": "object", "properties": {"is_task": {"type": "boolean"}, "title": {"type": "string"},
"due": {"type": "string"}, "priority": {"type": "string", "enum": ["High", "Medium", "Low"]}}}
@on_trigger
def run(event):
gmail = build("gmail", "v1", credentials=Credentials(credentials.connection("google", "work")), cache_discovery=False)
seen = set(state.get("seen") or [])
msgs = [m for m in gmail.users().messages().list(userId="me", q="in:inbox category:primary newer_than:1d")
.execute().get("messages", []) if m["id"] not in seen]
report_fetched(len(msgs))
if not msgs:
return {"tasks": 0}
created = []
for m in msgs:
msg = gmail.users().messages().get(userId="me", id=m["id"], format="metadata").execute()
out = ai.generate(f"Does this email ask me to do something? Due date as YYYY-MM-DD or empty.\n{msg['snippet']}",
json_schema=SCHEMA, max_output_tokens=120).json
if out.get("is_task"):
created.append({"fields": {"Title": out["title"], "Due": out.get("due") or None, "Priority": out["priority"],
"Email": f"https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/{m['id']}"}})
seen.add(m["id"])
for i in range(0, len(created), 10):
http.post(AIRTABLE_URL, headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {credentials.secret('AIRTABLE_API_KEY')}"},
json={"records": created[i:i + 10], "typecast": True})
state.set("seen", list(seen)[-1000:])
return {"tasks": len(created)}FAQ
Common questions
How does it decide an email is a request?
What if no due date is mentioned?
Does the task link back to the email?
What permissions does it need?
Does it need AI?
How many runs does it use?
Can I change how it works?
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