Choose a job you already understand
A useful first project begins with an ordinary task: organizing a new inquiry, drafting a handoff note, or finding an answer in an approved handbook. Pick something a person on your team knows how to do today. That person can explain what a correct result looks like and spot mistakes during testing.
Avoid starting with a vague goal such as “automate the office.” It is too broad to price, test, or hand over.
Write a one-sentence scope
When this input arrives, prepare this output for this person to review.
For example: “When a service inquiry arrives, prepare a summary and a draft reply for the office manager.” That is an illustrative scope, not a claim that a connector is available. Name the source of the input and where the draft should appear. Keep sending, booking, and payment outside the first version unless they are deliberately approved parts of the project.
Choose the information it can use
List the documents and fields needed for that one task. A reply draft may need an approved service list and business hours. It probably does not need a complete customer database. Identify an owner for each source, check that the information is current, and decide what the workflow should do when a fact is missing.
“Ask a person” is a valid outcome. Use fictional examples when private customer records are unnecessary.
Make review part of the workflow
Decide who checks the result and what they check: facts, recipient, tone, and any commitment. Keep the review close to the proposed action so the reviewer sees the exact content. Human approval, structured outputs, and evaluations can reduce risk, but they do not remove the need to test your particular workflow. See OpenAI’s agent-safety guidance.
Test the awkward cases too
Create a small set of examples that includes an ordinary request, missing details, contradictory information, a duplicate request, and a request outside your services. Include an input that tries to tell the assistant to ignore its rules. Decide in advance what should happen in each case.
- The normal path produces the expected draft.
- Missing facts remain visible.
- Out-of-scope requests stop cleanly.
- Revoked access stops working.
- A person can pause and recover the workflow.
Agree on the handoff
Before expanding, check whether the team can operate the workflow, recognize a failure, and pause it. Keep the access owner, running costs, and recovery steps with the workflow instructions. Compare actual review effort with the old process, including correction time.
Your next step is simple: write the one-sentence scope and bring three fictional examples to the setup conversation.