Tips for Automating Project Control Tasks

There are three versions of Claude. Most project managers are only using one. Here is what they are missing. Claude Chat, Cowork, and Code are not the same tool. Each one does something the others cannot. And knowing which to reach for changes how much you get done. A) Claude Chat — Your thinking partner on demand You open it, type, and Claude responds. No setup. No memory. Just fast, sharp thinking whenever you need it. Use it for: → 1. Stress-testing your project plan before you present it → 2. Writing a first draft of a stakeholder update in minutes → 3. Preparing for a difficult conversation with a sponsor → 4. Running a quick pre-mortem on a risk you are worried about → 5. Summarising a long document into three key points If you are new to Claude, start here. B) Claude Cowork — Your AI teammate Cowork connects to your tools and remembers your projects across sessions. You set it up once and it already knows your context every time you open it. Use it for: → 1. Drafting weekly status reports from your project notes → 2. Producing a full stakeholder briefing before a board meeting → 3. Managing your action log and flagging what is overdue → 4. Running lessons learned at project close → 5. Delivering documents that sound like you wrote them This is where Claude starts to feel like a real working relationship. C) Claude Code — Your automation engine Most PMs think this one is not for them. It is. Use it for: → 1. Building a project tracker automatically from a template → 2. Creating a dashboard from your data without touching a spreadsheet → 3. Automating your weekly report so it runs itself → 4. Documenting a process from a rough set of notes → 5. Building tools your team can use without technical support No coding required. You describe what you need. Claude builds it. Which one should you start with? New to Claude — start with Chat. Ready to go deeper — move to Cowork. Want to automate and build — explore Code. Most PMs who use all three find that Chat handles the thinking, Cowork handles the delivery, and Code handles the systems. Together they change how you work completely. This week I am covering all three in detail. If you want to build capability across all three in a structured setting, the AI Capability Cohort for Project Managers starts on 4th May. DM me APM and I will share more details with you.

Using OpenAI and ACC Connect to automate connecting construction project data 🏗️🤖   Construction projects generate huge amounts of data. Making sense of it all can be a major challenge.   Autodesk Construction Cloud helps by creating relationships between different kinds of records (like RFIs, Issues, and Costs) so it’s easier to keep track of the entire project.   But manually finding and creating relationships for every item can add up to a lot of admin time across a whole project.   ⚡ ACC Connect, powered by Workato, provides a low-code solution to automate and integrate with Autodesk Construction Cloud through its open APIs.   This allows us to automate tasks like creating new relationships, and connect to AI capabilities (in this case the OpenAI API) to analyse the project data and find these related items. Automations like this can run in the background, continuously working so we stay in control of our data.   In this example I'm finding and linking RFIs and Issues to a new related Change Order. This could also be applied to schedule items, assets, documents, and many other data types in ACC.   Something similar could be achieved with hard coded relationship rules, but leveraging AI creates a more dynamic and straightforward solution.   🔗To get a sense of where things are going, check out the AI Assistant Autodesk announced at AU 2024: https://lnkd.in/gmGKVK5j   🔗Check out my previous post on automating issue creation in ACC with ChatGPT: https://lnkd.in/gwwPTmB9   🔗Learn more about ACC Connect: https://lnkd.in/gKMG6QVa   #AutodeskConstructionCloud #AutodeskPlatformServices #OpenAI #Autodesk #AI

🚀 Power Automate: Best Practices That Actually Work Whether you're just starting out or scaling enterprise flows, these tips will save you hours of frustration and make your automations sing 🎶 🔧 1. Name Everything Clearly Use consistent naming conventions for flows, variables, and actions. Future-you will thank you. 📦 2. Use Scopes to Organize Logic Group related actions into scopes to keep your flow tidy and easier to debug. 🧪 3. Test with Real Data Don’t rely on sample inputs—test with actual data to catch edge cases early. 📛 4. Handle Errors Gracefully Use “Configure Run After” and Try-Catch patterns to prevent silent failures. 📊 5. Monitor Performance Check flow analytics and run history to spot bottlenecks or excessive triggers. 🔐 6. Secure Your Connections Avoid using personal accounts for production flows. Use service accounts with least privilege. 🧠 7. Document Your Flow Logic Add comments and descriptions so others (and you) can understand the “why” behind each step. 💬 8. Stay Updated Power Automate evolves fast—follow Microsoft’s official blog and community forums to stay sharp. 💡 Bonus Tip: Use icons and diagrams to visualize your flow architecture. Check out this resource for Power Platform visuals to level up your documentation game. Let’s make automation smarter, not harder. #PowerAutomate #MicrosoftFlow #AutomationTips #DigitalTransformation #LowCode #BestPractices

The gap between a project estimate and kick-off can be a killer. (Automation Tip Tuesday 👇) For service-based businesses (any business, really!), friction is the ultimate profit killer. A client agrees to the scope, but then… paperwork, approvals, deposits — it all creates delay and destroys momentum. One of our recent automation projects tackled this head-on. Our client, a high-end home remodeling firm, was using a host of tools to manage their workflows, but the process of moving from an estimate to a signed agreement (with a deposit) was still manual and disjointed. We streamlined it. Now: ✅ Estimates auto-generate in Airtable, pulling project details from a structured pricing database. ✅ Signed agreements trigger deposits automatically — Dubsado sends the contract, collects e-signatures, and instantly generates an invoice in QBO. ✅ Once the deposit is paid, the project kicks off in Google Calendar and updates the team’s task board. The result? Faster approvals, fewer dropped leads, and a smoother experience for homeowners eager to begin their renovations. Software should work for you, not slow you down. If your business has gaps in its process, automation might be the missing piece. What’s killing your momentum? -- Hi, I’m Nathan Weill, a business process automation expert. ⚡️ These tips I share every Tuesday are drawn from real-world projects we've worked on with our clients at Flow Digital. We help businesses unlock the power of automation with customized solutions so they can run better, faster and smarter — and we can help you too! #automationtiptuesday #automation #workflow #efficiency

Ever spend the first day of a project just typing tasks into a planner? I used to, until I built this simple Power Automate flow. Here’s what it does: ✅ Trigger: I manually start the flow when a new project kicks off. ✅ Read the plan: It pulls every lesson or task from a single Excel table. ✅ Create tasks: For each row, it automatically creates a Planner task and updates the details. ✅ Track & check off: Tasks land in Planner where the team can easily track progress and check items off. The setup took just a few minutes and it now saves hours of repetitive setup work every time we start a new project. If you have a project plan sitting in Excel, this is a quick win that will transform your productivity.

I've been spending time building Akash Jr. (a bunch of AI Agents automating day to day work). Some learnings to make building work better for you. Agent building and task automation are quite similar. If you think of them as different things you end up with complex orchestration logic and unreliable results. After a couple rage quits I found an approach that actually works. 𝟏. 𝐁𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦 Literally sketch the order of operations for each task you want your agent to handle like a checklist. I wanted Akash Jr. to handle all the stuff I couldn’t believe I spent so much time on, so I wrote every task down and how I go about doing it. 𝟐. 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐬𝐤 𝐚𝐭 𝐚 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 Each item on this list now becomes your roadmap for the tasks to build automations for. This will later be part of your agent. I didn’t like how much time I spent reviewing Gong call recordings so it became the first task I automated and it subsequently Akash became Jr's first working skill. 𝟑. 𝐎𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐫 Now that all your tasks are mapped and built out, comes the agent building. Plan out orchestration by asking yourself: - 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭? (time-based like a cron, event-based like a webhook, or on-demand like a Slack command) - 𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲? (APIs, databases, or tools you already rely on) For Akash Jr., I stitched together the Gong call review automation with Slack delivery and a CRM update as a sub workflow, that is now part of it’s arsenal of tools. All these agent building learnings are going directly into Vellum, so soon you won’t have to build the hard way. Going from idea to agent in minutes on Vellum is sooner than you think. P.S: The 🧠 behind Akash Jr. are on the whiteboard behind my desk 😃