Overwhelmed by hundreds of daily emails? This tutorial shows how to build a daily email summary workflow in Needle that digests your inbox into a structured morning briefing.

Overview

The workflow scans your Gmail inbox every morning, categorizes emails by importance and topic, and delivers a concise summary—replacing email overwhelm with a 5-minute daily briefing.

Key Actions

1. Scheduled Daily Trigger – Runs every morning at your preferred time (e.g., 7 AM)
2. Gmail Inbox Scan – Retrieves emails from the past 24 hours
3. AI Categorization – Sorts emails into categories (Urgent, Meetings, Info, Low Priority)
4. Summary Generation – Creates a structured digest with key points from each category
5. Delivery – Sends the summary via email or Slack

What You'll Need

• Gmail Account – Personal or Google Workspace Tip: Exclude certain senders or labels from the summary (e.g., newsletters)
• Delivery Preference – Email, Slack, or both
• Schedule – When you want to receive your daily summary (e.g., 7 AM)

How It Works

Every morning at your set time:

1. The workflow retrieves all emails received in the last 24 hours
2. AI analyzes each email to determine:
   • Urgency level (immediate action required, informational, low priority)
   • Category (client communication, internal team, meetings, finance, etc.)
   • Key information (action items, deadlines, decisions)
3. Emails are grouped into sections:
   • 🚨 Urgent (3 emails): Action required today
   • 📅 Meetings (5 emails): Calendar invites and meeting updates
   • 📋 Client Communications (8 emails): Client emails requiring response
   • ℹ️ Informational (12 emails): Updates, reports, FYIs
   • 📧 Low Priority (25 emails): Newsletters, automated notifications
4. A structured summary is generated with:
   • Email count per category
   • Top 3-5 items per category with sender and subject
   • Identified action items with deadlines
5. Summary is sent to your inbox or Slack channel

Wrap-up

With this Needle workflow, you start each day with a clear understanding of your inbox priorities—no more drowning in email, just a focused briefing that helps you tackle what matters. Perfect for executives, managers, and busy professionals.