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Every 10 minutes

Get a brief on external guests before each meeting

Half an hour before a meeting with people from outside your company, a short brief on their companies arrives in your Slack DMs.

Runs
Every 10 minutes
Apps
Google Calendar, Slack
AI
Yes, uses the built-in AI allowance
Access
Calendar read; Slack chat:write

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: 30 minutes before any meeting with external guests, post a short brief about the attendees' companies to my Slack DMs.

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 sales director has six or seven calls a day with prospects, partners and investors. Between back-to-back meetings she has two minutes to remember who she is about to talk to, and often joins a call without knowing what the other company does or how big it is.

A short brief on each guest's company, arriving just before the meeting, means you walk in knowing who you are talking to. Founders, salespeople and account managers use it to prepare for every external call without blocking time to research.

What you get out of it

  • Better first minutes of every call

    Knowing what the company does and what has happened lately makes for sharper questions and a more confident start.

  • Preparation without blocking time

    The brief arrives on its own, so you do not need to research between meetings.

  • Only meetings that need it

    Internal meetings are skipped. You only get briefs when someone from outside your company is on the invitation.

  • Delivered where you already look

    A direct message in Slack is easy to read on the way to the call, on desktop or phone.

How it works

What happens, step by step

  1. Every few minutes ClickRuntime looks at your calendar for meetings starting in the next 30 minutes.

  2. It picks out meetings with guests from outside your company and skips any it has already briefed.

  3. AI reads each guest company's website and writes a short brief.

  4. The brief is sent to you as a direct message in Slack.

Before it runs live

  • Connect Google Calendar
  • Connect Slack, then invite the app to the channel (type /invite @ClickRuntime there)

What you get

RunsEvery 10 minutes
Get a brief on external guests before each meetingtoday, 9:00Succeeded
Slack · Direct messageBrief for Intro with Northwind Logistics: regional freight company, about 300 staff, recently opened a depot in Leeds and is hiring for a digital team.

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 Google Sheets
  • Combine it with other Google Calendar and Slack 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.
pre_meeting_briefs_in_slack.pyexample
from datetime import datetime, timedelta, timezone
from google.oauth2.credentials import Credentials
from googleapiclient.discovery import build
from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, state, notify, ai

MY_DOMAIN, MY_SLACK_ID = "example.com", "U012ABCDEF"
SKIP = {MY_DOMAIN, "gmail.com", "outlook.com"}

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    now = datetime.now(timezone.utc)
    cal = build("calendar", "v3", credentials=Credentials(credentials.connection("google", "work")), cache_discovery=False)
    events = cal.events().list(calendarId="primary", timeMin=now.isoformat(), timeMax=(now + timedelta(minutes=35)).isoformat(),
                               singleEvents=True).execute().get("items", [])
    briefed = set(state.get("briefed") or [])
    for ev in events:
        domains = {a["email"].split("@")[1] for a in ev.get("attendees", [])} - SKIP
        if not domains or ev["id"] in briefed:
            continue
        sites = "\n\n".join(f"{d}:\n{http.get(f'https://{d}', timeout=10).text[:3000]}" for d in domains)
        brief = ai.generate(f"Write a 3-line brief per company for a meeting:\n{sites}", max_output_tokens=400).text
        notify.slack(f"Brief for *{ev['summary']}*:\n{brief}", channel=MY_SLACK_ID)
        briefed.add(ev["id"])
    state.set("briefed", list(briefed)[-500:])
    return {"meetings": len(events)}

FAQ

Common questions

How does it know a guest is external?
It compares each attendee's email domain with your own. Anyone from a different domain is treated as external, and personal email addresses such as Gmail are left out of company research.
What is in the brief?
A few lines per company: what it does, its size and market, and anything worth knowing before the call. It is based on the company's public website.
Will I get a brief for the same meeting twice?
No. Each meeting is briefed once, even if it is moved or updated.
What permissions does it need?
Calendar read; Slack chat:write. 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 (every 10 minutes). 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 “Get a brief on external guests before each meeting” from your assistant

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