Building my Admin Agent with Zapier Agents
Learn how I built an agent in Zapier Agents to handle all my admin work.
I’ll be honest, I did a bunch of sporadic building in 2024.
There were just so many shiny new things with Zapier. I was a total Tamatoa crab (if you have children who watch Moana you’ll know what I mean).
But now it’s time.
I’m ready to build out my own AI Agent workforce.
My goal? Outsource as much work as possible so that I can focus on creatively building new tools and agents.
I’m breathing life into a workforce of Angels, I mean Agents, and I’m giving you the details so you can build them, too.
Today, I’ll show you how I built my first Agent I’m calling my Admin Agent.
It helps me with all my communication in email and Slack and coordinates my meetings and tasks.
Let’s jump in.
Why build an AI agent workforce in Zapier
I’m building my workforce using Zapier Agents. There are a few reasons for this but here are the two most important ones:
- Zapier Agents give me access to the 30,000+ actions available in the apps that integrate with Zapier.
- Zapier gives me Tables, Interfaces, and Zaps to build the entire operation in a centralized place, put automation front and center, and keep my tech stack nice and tidy.
Agents make decisions and I want the full power of automation (Zapier) at their fingertips.
I keep things simple by centralizing operations in Zapier and using other apps like Google Calendar, Slack, Google Docs, etc. only as necessary.
My agent workforce will breathe simplicity.
If they end up adding more work to my plate, I lose.
For now, my workforce will have three main agents:
- Admin Agent for communication and coordination
- Content Agent for creativity and ideas
- Operations Agent for metrics and projects
Each agent will have multiple behaviors, shared data sources, and tons of different actions they can take within apps I use.
Let’s take a closer look at the Admin Agent.
Admin Agent: Email and Slack
At the basic level, my agent needs to read my email and Slack messages, decide what type of message it sees, determine whether it needs a response and draft a response for me if it does.
Just like I would do if I had my own “exec assistant,” I need to give the agent access to the context, apps, and information that will help it do it’s job:
- Style guide
- Access to my Gmail
- Access to my calendar
- Access to my Slack
The agent needs access to my “Bryce Messaging Style Guide” so it knows how I like to respond. I took a handful of actual responses I’ve sent and had AI develop my own style guide with examples.
I throw that bad boy into Google Docs and handed it to the agent.
The agent references it if it needs to draft a response in email or Slack.
If an email comes in about scheduling a meeting, the agent looks at my calendar and proposes or confirms a time that’s available.
All I do is add the scheduling actions the agent needs in Google Calendar.
The agent decides when to reference it.
In Slack, if my name is every mentioned the agent will scan the thread, summarize it, supply a draft response, include a link to the original message, and send me a Slackbot reply with all the information.
Instead of bouncing around my notifications like I normally would, I now just hone in on my agent’s messages.
It’s golden for my focus.
Two more things make this agent next-level genius: tasks and inter-agent communication.
How I tell my admin agent what to do
It’s one thing to have your agent draft email replies for you. It’s another to go tell it to block off time or create a calendar invite for you and someone else.
But with Zapier Agents, you can easily set up a trigger when you send your agent instructions via email.
Here’s how I did it.
I created a new contact in Google for “Agent” and linked it up to my own email address “+agent” like this: bryce.vernon+agent@zapier.com.
Now, if I ever need to chat with my agent to take action, I forward an email to “Agent” and tell it what I want.
When I set up this behavior, I add actions like creating a quick add event in Google Calendar or adding a task in Todoist.
My agent acts JUST like an executive assistant.
It can block time on my calendar for deep work, schedule meetings, or create Todoist tasks for reminders.
Inter-Agent communication
The next step to my agent workforce is to finalize the content and creative agent and make sure it can talk to the other agents in my workforce.
In order to let each agent work with each other, I have a series of Zapier Tables that keep track of what’s going on with an “assigned to” field.
If a task, message, or item needs to get assigned to another agent then they’ll immediately get notified and can pick up the next set of tasks.
For instance, if I’m in email I may need to block off time on my calendar and spin up a draft piece of content for a campaign my team is working on.
Both the Admin Agent and the Content Agent will need to work together to get this done. They’ll know to update the field in the table accordingly.
Stay tuned for more…
This is just the start. I’m going to get real crisp on how a content and creative agent can help me produce better content more quickly.
I want to have outlines, ideas, and starting points every time I go to create content.
Most importantly, I want to spend more time raising the quality of my content.
Agents will help by taking care of everything else.
To recap:
- Zapier Agents can take action across 7,000 apps
- My Admin Agent handles email, Slack, tasks, and scheduling
- My workforce is just starting, stay tuned for more
That’s all for this week!
Happy Building,
Bryce
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