Page 30 - GBC summer English 2025

Zapier is an integration platform
that facilitates workflow automation
across platforms. It has integrations
to more than 7,000 platforms like
Google Calendar, Microsoft
Outlook, and ChatGPT. Zapier
comes built with thousands of
“automation recipes” that you can
leverage; you can also build your
own from scratch.
Building automation workflows
with platforms like Zapier takes the
mystery out of building automated
workflows. You only need a basic
understanding of triggers and
actions to connect your systems
together and create end-to-end
workflows. In almost all circum-
stances, workflows consist of a
trigger and one or more actions:
•  Trigger - the event that starts the
workflow
•  Action(s) - a series of steps taken
once the trigger event occurs
By establishing a trigger and
subsequent actions, we can build
complex workflows to save hours of
time every week. Here are two
examples of AI-powered automa-
tions that use basic trigger-action
structures to automate processes.
1. Event Availability Response
Use Microsoft Outlook, Google
Calendar, and ChatGPT to craft
responses to outing inquiries.
Trigger: New Wedding Inquiry
Email received in Microsoft Outlook
Action: Check date availability in
Google Calendar
Action: Prompt ChatGPT to write a
response to the inquiry with date
availability
Action: Create email draft in
Microsoft Outlook
Action: Notify user that draft is
ready for review
By building this automation, a
fully drafted response to all event
inquiries will appear in your
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Golf Business Canada
Outlook drafts within a few minutes
of every event inquiry. You could
certainly build this automation to
send the email, but many sales
managers want the opportunity to
review and customize the response.
2. Weekly Task Tracking
This feature uses Fireflies.ai,
ChatGPT, and Google Tasks to keep
track of weekly to-do lists.
Trigger: New Meeting Summary in
Fireflies.ai
Action: Use ChatGPT to extract
action items from summary
Action: Add tasks to Google Tasks
with due dates
Action: Notify me when tasks are
due
This automation eliminates the
need to take notes in your weekly
staff meeting. Instead, the AI note
taking app will record and transcribe
the meeting. Then, ChatGPT can
extract and format your relevant
action items. Finally, you can add
these action items in Google Tasks
for you to keep track of them on a
weekly basis. This automation could
be scaled across an entire organization.
The automations previously
mentioned are simple examples of
what platforms like Zapier can do,
the options are truly endless. It is
important to note that you must
choose widely utilized, cloud-based
systems in order to maximize the
power of AI and Automation. For
example, if your event calendar is
managed on a proprietary platform,
you will not be able to “check avail-
ability” as described in the Event
Inquiry Response example.
For these reasons, many courses,
clubs and small businesses have
shifted the buying criteria for their
software. Instead of focusing on
features first, users are focusing on
the ability to integrate. This is
currently a major trend in software
and platforms that do not integrate
well are becoming obsolete.
PRIVACY, SECURITY, &
COMPLIANCE
It is important to highlight privacy,
security and compliance concerns
when discussing the use of AI and
specifically, LLMs, for business
purposes. As we have discussed, all
machine learning – LLMs included
– are trained using data. Some LLMs
will utilize your words and
uploaded files as part of their
training dataset. This presents a
privacy and security concern for
anyone who interacts with an LLM.
Before providing any sensitive,
confidential, or protected data into
an LLM, it is important to under-
stand the platform’s terms of service
and consult with a privacy lawyer
who understands the local, national
and international laws governing
data privacy. To be safe, avoid
providing any confidential,
protected, or sensitive information
to an LLM.
PUTTING IT ALL INTO ACTION
We have covered several topics in
this article, from the basics of config-
uring GPT-4 to building powerful
automated workflows using Zapier.
To summarize, your next steps
include upgrading to ChatGPT-4,
setting your custom instructions,
and signing up for Zapier to explore
automations to save you time. In our
upcoming articles, we will continue
to share AI and automation insights.
For now, give these tools a try and
start automating the busy work so
you can focus on what matters most
– running your business.
Editor’s Note – Be sure to check out the
next edition of Golf Business Canada
magazine where we will explore
Marketing Best Practices for the Age of
AI.
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