We are in the middle of a group exercise to see if we can make some automation improvements to our own day-to-day tasks. Hopefully this process will give us some insights that we can bring to designing, validating or auditing our regulated processes.

Last time, we chose our platform and did some rewording of our simple task's SOP to specifically include links to the various input files, workspaces and websites that we will need to access while performing the task.

With that simple step, we should hopefully have a procedure that we can just click through, already saving us time and effort. Here's my example (modified to use the Google ecosystem for simplicity):

Notice that I've highlighted one nice feature of using the Google infrastructure - as I go through the steps of my task I can open a live preview of a linked file within Google Drive without even leaving my SOP. Similar features exist on many other platforms (as long as you're actually using their cloud and document format).

Adding Triggers

One of the things I asked you to do in Step 2 was to identify any triggers necessary. Let's start with whatever it is that triggers the task itself - in my case it's just a repeating daily task, but you may have something that's triggered by an email or some other event.

I wrote:

Ok - so that should be familiar - we all use todo apps and calendars regularly, probably as part of our email service. Before jumping into the obvious choice, I do have some criteria to consider before choosing:

1. The reminder needs to be in my face (don't make me check a random web page that I'll forget about), and can be snoozed without losing track of the task.
2. For frequently occurring tasks like this daily one, you could just have a prominent shortcut, but for anything else the reminder should include a link to the SOP itself, to make it as easy as possible to start.
3. It needs to allow recurring or re-triggering tasks without my having to re-set things. While most calendaring, note-taking and todo apps allow recurring tasks, sometimes they're limited in surprising ways. And when it comes to triggering on emails and events, you might need something entirely different like Power Automate, Zapier or IFTTT.
4. And finally, I don't want frequent tasks to clutter my calendar view.

Other triggers that you might want include those linked to specific task steps, such as another reminder that’s automatically set in the future or an email that gets sent out.

In the end, you have lots of options, so try something simple and see how it works for you.

I've tried many options, but these days I find that what works best is a combination of a simple daily and weekly checkbox-led task lists in my journal, combined with Notion tasks for longer term and recurring calendar items.

Why Notion? Because it sends me an email when something is due, so it comes right to my inbox. Then I can use my webmail provider's snooze function to set it to come back when I have the time to deal with it. This works really well for things like tax installments and other reminders that I just don't want on my calendar.

Since my chosen SOP is a daily task, I added it to my daily task template. Now we have an automated trigger for the task, and easy "start button" to give us frictionless entry into our procedures.

Which brings us to the next topic: templates, text expanders and auto-complete.

Until next time, thanks for reading!

– Brendan

p.s. Enjoy this message? Read more at the Hyland Quality Systems website.