How many minutes do you spend every morning scanning your Outlook calendar, figuring out which meetings need your attention and which ones you can skip? For most of us, it’s a daily ritual that quietly eats into productive time.
What if I told you that you could automate this entirely — and it takes less than 5 minutes to set up?
Enter Workflows (Frontier), a powerful agent inside Microsoft Copilot that lets you build scheduled automations using plain English. No Power Automate connectors. No code. Just describe what you want, and Copilot does the rest.
What I Built
I created a workflow that runs every weekday at 08:00 AM IST, reviews my entire Outlook calendar for the day, and sends me a neatly organized summary as a Teams message — before I even open my first app.
Here’s the exact prompt I used:
“Every weekday at 08:00 AM IST, review all meetings scheduled on my Outlook calendar for the day and send me a summary as a Microsoft Teams message.
For each meeting, include the following details:
- Meeting title
- Start and end time
- Meeting organizer
- Required attendees
- Whether I am listed as a required attendee
Organize the response into two sections:
- Meetings where I am the organizer or a required attendee
- Meetings where I am not a required attendee
Within each section, sort the meetings by start time in ascending order.”
That’s it. One prompt. The Workflows (Frontier) agent takes care of everything — reading your calendar, extracting meeting metadata, categorizing meetings based on your role, sorting them by time, and delivering the final summary to Teams.
Why This Matters
As someone who juggles 8–12 meetings on a busy day, this small automation has had an outsized impact on my mornings:
- No more calendar scanning — I get a clean, prioritized view of my day in Teams before I even start working.
- Instant clarity on priorities — Meetings where I’m a required attendee or organizer are listed first, so I know exactly what demands my focus.
- Reduced meeting surprises — The “not a required attendee” section helps me decide which meetings I can skip or follow asynchronously.
- Zero effort, every day — It runs on autopilot, weekdays only.
What is Workflows (Frontier)?
Workflows (Frontier) is an agent within Microsoft Copilot that allows you to create automated, scheduled, or event-triggered workflows using natural language prompts. It connects seamlessly with Microsoft 365 services — Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, and more — making it incredibly easy to automate repetitive tasks without writing a single line of code.
Think of it as having a personal assistant that follows your instructions to the letter, every single day, without reminders.
What Else Can You Automate?
The possibilities are endless. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
- 📧 Daily email digest — Summarize unread emails from key stakeholders every morning
- 📁 Weekly file roundup — Get a Teams message listing all files shared with you in the past week
- ✅ Meeting follow-up — After every meeting, auto-send a summary of action items to attendees
- 📊 Status reminders — Send yourself a Friday afternoon prompt to update your weekly status report
🎬 Watch the Full Demo
I’ve recorded a complete walkthrough of this setup on my YouTube channel JBSWiki, where I demo the workflow live — from prompt to Teams delivery. If you’re a visual learner, go check it out!
👉 Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ayDKHN4ALo
Final Thoughts
We often chase big productivity hacks, but sometimes the biggest wins come from eliminating small, repetitive tasks. This 5-minute setup saves me 10–15 minutes every single workday. Over a year, that’s 40+ hours reclaimed — just from automating a morning calendar review.
If you’re using Microsoft 365 with Copilot, give Workflows (Frontier) a try. Start with the prompt above, tweak it to your needs, and let AI handle the mundane so you can focus on what matters.
Thank You,
Vivek Janakiraman
Disclaimer:
The views expressed on this blog are mine alone and do not reflect the views of my company or anyone else. All postings on this blog are provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights.