Automating some of the simpler tasks

I can happily announce that downloading report files, that are sent from the system daily, are now being automatically downloaded to the folder of my choice.

What possible benefit would that have?

Well, that is my first baby step toward the world of automation. Long time ago, the team and I tried using Zapier to automate some things, but our work didn't really have that much of repetitiveness, and wasn't structured within a locked system. So it was oly the knowledge that something as beautiful as that existed. Fast forward to present day, we have daily system reports delivered to our inbox. Most are useless, but 3-4 of those are important. Some of which we need as is, some of which we need as a source for our dashboard.

I have read somewhere an encouragement to start automating small daily tasks. Just to get a feel for automation, and to free up that mind space. So in that spirit, I saved my self 5 minutes a day, and more minutes at the beginning of the week because I have to do weekend emails as well. (using Microsoft Power Automate)

But let me explain how really this made a difference.

The process used to be:

  1. Open email.
  2. Find the particular report email from 30 other similar ones. (I later has them filed automatically by the system into folders).
  3. Download the file.
  4. Rename the file and add yesterday's date.
  5. Move it to the folder needed.
  6. Make a copy to the team's folder.
  7. Repeat for the 2 more that are already there.
  8. Repeat for 1 more that comes in the afternoon. (So I have to be conscious of the time, as the team does not have access to that particular report, and having it in the team's folder is important)

Now, each process may take less than a minute. But that is already some precious processing power that I am wasting in the early morning just to do this. In addition to being conscious about the afternoon report. 

In addition to coming out of the weekends and downloading different dates, and making sure I am note missing up the dates when renaming the files.

In addition to coming back from long holidays where I have to be extra careful with the naming...etc.

All of that now costs me 0 minutes. 
In effect, I have saved up around 21 hours a year of just that simple daily work. 

More importantly, coming back from a weekend or a holiday, I don't have a mess to deal with. My team has access all the time to the latest up-to-date reports.

This has now opened new doors in my mind to explore ways to automate. I might post some other examples in the future.