Every 5 minutes
Send support emails to your team in Slack
Every new support email is summarised with a priority and posted to your support channel.
- Runs
- Every 5 minutes
- Apps
- Gmail, Slack
- AI
- Yes, uses the built-in AI allowance
- Access
- Gmail gmail.modify; Slack chat:write
Send this to your assistant
Create a ClickRuntime automation: every 5 minutes, take new emails sent to support@, summarise each one with a priority and topic, post it to #support and label it in Gmail.
First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.
Why use it
Why teams use this automation
A support inbox holds a mix of emergencies and everyday questions, and they look identical in a list of subject lines. A customer whose checkout is broken waits behind three password questions and a newsletter reply. The person watching the inbox has to open each message to judge urgency, and when that person is away, nobody looks at all, so the most serious message may wait longest.
Every 5 minutes new support emails are read, and the built-in AI in ClickRuntime produces a short summary and a priority for each. The summary and priority are posted in the support channel in Slack, and the email is labeled in Gmail, so the team can start with whatever matters most.
Customer support teams, small SaaS companies and agencies with a shared support address will see the most benefit.
What you get out of it
Emergencies jump the queue
A priority beside each message means a broken checkout or data loss is handled first, even if it arrived behind a dozen routine questions. Fixing the biggest problems first limits the damage and the number of angry follow-up emails.
The team shares one view of support
Because messages appear in a channel, coverage does not depend on one person watching the inbox, and colleagues can claim an email by replying in the thread. Nothing is missed when somebody is out sick or on leave.
Summaries cut reading time
Knowing the gist of an email before opening it helps an agent choose what to handle next and brings the right context to the reply. Replies start from understanding rather than from a cold read of a long thread.
Gmail labels keep the mailbox organized
Labels applied at the same time mean the inbox itself reflects priority, so searching later for all urgent emails from last month is quick and reliable. Reporting on volume by type becomes straightforward too.
Fewer customers feel ignored
Quicker first responses reduce repeat emails and angry follow-ups, which cuts the number of messages the team has to read in the first place. The team ends up with fewer tickets to chase at the end of the day.
How it works
What happens, step by step
Every 5 minutes, ClickRuntime checks Gmail for new emails sent to your support address, skipping any it has already handled.
AI reads each email, gives it a priority and topic, and writes a one-line summary.
The summary is posted to your #support Slack channel, such as "[HIGH] Login from ops@northwind.example: Whole team locked out".
The email is labelled in Gmail so you can see it has been triaged.
Before it runs live
- Connect Google through your own Google app (a one-time, 10-minute setup), so it works with your own Gmail
- Connect Slack, then invite the app to the channel (type /invite @ClickRuntime there)
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 Google Sheets
- Combine it with other Gmail and Slack 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, state, ai, notify, report_fetched
@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 = gmail.users().messages().list(userId="me", q="to:support@ newer_than:1d", maxResults=25).execute().get("messages", [])
new = [m for m in msgs if m["id"] not in seen]
report_fetched(len(new))
if not new:
return {"new": 0}
labels = {l["name"]: l["id"] for l in gmail.users().labels().list(userId="me").execute()["labels"]}
for m in new:
msg = gmail.users().messages().get(userId="me", id=m["id"], format="metadata", metadataHeaders=["From", "Subject"]).execute()
h = {x["name"]: x["value"] for x in msg["payload"]["headers"]}
r = ai.generate(f"Subject: {h.get('Subject')}\n{msg['snippet']}", max_output_tokens=80,
json_schema={"type": "object", "properties": {"priority": {"enum": ["high", "medium", "low"]},
"topic": {"type": "string"}, "summary": {"type": "string"}}}).json
notify.slack(f"[{r['priority'].upper()}] {r['topic']} from {h.get('From')}: {r['summary']}", channel="#support")
label = labels.get(f"support/{r['priority']}")
if label:
gmail.users().messages().modify(userId="me", id=m["id"], body={"addLabelIds": [label]}).execute()
state.set("seen", [m["id"] for m in msgs])
return {"processed": len(new)}FAQ
Common questions
How is the priority decided?
Can it handle emails in other languages?
Is the customer's email shown in full in Slack?
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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