👋🏼 Hey there! Welcome to a free workflow teardown edition of Offload, a newsletter for professionals to learn how to build products and automate work with AI and no-code tools.

In this edition, you'll learn how to automate a newsletter section with AI, using Make.com, Airtable and ChatGPT. While this example focuses on a newsletter section, there are many other use cases you can use the same idea.

Let’s get started 👇🏼

-Offload This-

What are we automating

One section of my newsletter is called "Tool of the Week", in which I write a quick review of a tool I used to solve a real problem in my day-to-day.

I test each tool myself and share a short verdict, so you don’t have to waste time figuring out what’s worth it.

To make this process easier, I built a simple automation using AI. Instead of writing each week from scratch, I keep a running table of the tools I try, along with a few bullet points on what’s great (and what’s not).

The AI then takes that input and turns it into a nicely formatted newsletter snippet, ready to go for my weekly news 😃.

✅ Main benefit: I don’t waste time formatting or rewriting. I just log my thoughts in the table and let the system do the rest.

There are many other processes you can automate with the same idea, so learning it will be super useful.

Here’s what the flow looks like:

Now, let's go to the step by step on how to implement it.

Step by Step

1. Create a free Airtable account

Airtable is basically a more powerful, flexible version of Excel or Google Sheets, often used as a lightweight database.

Start by creating a base and adding a table. Add columns by clicking the plus sign, and set the field types (text, number, date, etc).

2. Create a new table and the relevant columns

For our case here, we are creating columns that are the type “long text” or “single line of text” where I write bullets and my impressions about the tools over time.

I don't care so much about the quality of my input as long is understandable. I will leave to an AI to polish it and make it easier to read.

These are the columns I have in my table:

With the table set up, we can move to the workflow itself.

3. Create a free account on make.com

Make.com is a no-code automation platform that lets you connect tools like Airtable and OpenAI without writing code. It has a generous free tier.

4. Add and configure the Airtable module

• Open Scenarios and click Create a New Scenario

• Hit the big plus (+) icon and choose the Airtable → Search Records module

Then, click to add a Connection, and select the Airtable OAuth option. Name the connection however you want and click Save.

A page to connect to the Airtable base will appear.

Click to add a base and scroll down until you find the database you've just created in Airtable.

Select, click “Grant Access”, and wait for the screen to load and close.

If that works correctly, you'll get back to Make to continue the configuration of the module, but now you have access to the table on Airtable.

Complete the configuration of this Airtable module by selecting the appropriate information in each of the dropdowns.

Here is what you need to select:

1. Base: the Airtable database in which you have the tools data

2. Table: the table of the database

3. View: in case there are multiple views of the same table, select the appropriate one

4. Output fields: all the fields you are going to use as inputs in your prompt and the output target field (in our case, the “formatted text”)

5. Formula: a filter formula for Make to only get back the tools (rows) that have a status set to “Draft”. Copy the formula in the screenshot above

   • make sure you have a Status column on Airtable with the option set to status and options “Draft”, “Ready to Publish”, and “Published”

6. Limit: is the maximum number of rows it can get from the table. I've set it to 1.

Hit save and click the “Run once” option at the bottom of the page.

You will get something like this screenshot below, depending on what you have filled out in the database:

5. Add the ChatGPT module (OpenAI)

• Click the plus sign to the right of the Airtable module

• Select the OpenAI → Create a Completion module

• If you haven’t already, add your OpenAI API Key

  • In this post, you can find instructions on how to find and create an OpenAI API key (step 4)

6. Configure the ChatGPT module

This is the nice part of the workflow, in my opinion.

You are going to configure a prompt that will be sent to ChatGPT requesting it to create a section for the newsletter, formatted in a specific way, and passing the columns as inputs. 😮

First, select the options in the dropdowns according to the screenshot below

For the Model, choose a mini one, ideally the o4. Why? Remember that any API call will cost you, and in this case, you are requesting a simple task to polish content. Leave better models for higher complex demands.

Add a message option and select the Role as User.

Now, the Text Content input is where you write the prompt to send to OpenAI.

If you tested the previous module (the Airtable module) and it worked correctly, when you click to fill the “Text Content” input, everything that was received in the previous module will appear as a variable to use in the prompt.

That is exactly what we need. Something like this:

Below, you can get the prompt I'm using for this step. Note that every variable in {curly brackets} of the prompt needs to be substituted by a variable from the previous module in make, like demonstrated here:

This is the prompt I'm using:

After that, hit save in the configuration page and also save the scenario. Make.com has this thing that it does not save as you progress unless you click to save … so, save!

Click the "run once” button to test the workflow, and you should see something like the screenshot below.

Note that the ChatGPT output is hidden under this path: choices/1/message/content

6. Send the output back to Airtable

Now that the GPT is preparing the formatted text to be used in the newsletter, we need to send that info back to the tools table and change the status of the row to “ready to publish”.

Here is how to do it.

Add another Airtable module right after the OpenAI module, but this time you are selecting the “update a record” option.

To configure this module, do the following:

1. You already have a Connection established with Airtable, so no need to add another one.

2. Select the same Base and Table you used in the first Module (you are updating the same table)

3. Record ID is the ID of the row of the tool that you received in the first module. Fortunately, Make makes it simple for you to reference back.
   
   

   

4. In the “Status” option, uncheck the “Map” toggle and select the status you want to update in the database. In my case, I'm setting it to “ready to publish” so I know it is ready.
   

5. Lastly, in the Formatted Text input, select the output text from the ChatGPT module. Remember that this information only appears if you have successfully tested the previous step.
   

   

6. Hit save in this Airtable module

To recap, you should have a scenario with three modules:

1. Airtable (Search Records) - fetches one tool with status = “Draft”

2. OpenAI (ChatGPT Completion) - creates the formatted text for the newsletter

3. Airtable (Update Record) - writes the output back and updates the status to “Ready”

Now, it is time to test the whole thing. Click run once at the bottom of the page and cross your fingers. 🤞 

This is what should happen:

Awesome! Offload success!!

Now I just keep the table open and jog unstructured content into it, and whenever I want a “tool of the week” section ready to use, just run the workflow.

This simple workflow with AI has many other potential use cases, like:

• Summarize and polish meeting notes: After a team meeting, you or your team members log rough notes into Airtable. AI turns those into clean, structured summaries ready to send by email or publish in Slack/Notion.

• Generate LinkedIn post drafts from idea snippets: you jot down half-baked content ideas or reflections in Airtable. The AI turns them into a polished, engaging LinkedIn post, saving creative time and helping you stay consistent.

• Write product update or changelog emails: You or your team logs recent feature releases or bug fixes. The AI turns that into a customer-friendly product update email or changelog message

It is up to you to get this knowledge and test in fields you find useful in your day to day.

Anyway, hope you liked it.

I would love to know if you had success with this workflow!

-Tools of the Build-

1. Make.com*: a no-code automation platform that connects different apps and services using visual workflows. Useful when you want to automate complex tasks across tools like Airtable, Gmail, OpenAI, and more.
   

2. Airtable*: a flexible spreadsheet-database hybrid that helps you organize, track, and collaborate on structured data. Useful when you need more control and structure than a traditional spreadsheet, especially for workflows, content planning, or lightweight app backends.
   

3. ChatGPT: a conversational AI developed by OpenAI that can understand prompts and generate human-like text responses. Well, you should know this already…

_{* Indicates links that are commissioned. You help me if you use them.}

-Any feedback-

Before you go, I’d love to know what you thought of today's newsletter to help me improve the content for you.