A significant portion of the workday is often consumed by tasks surrounding core responsibilities, which is sorting through emails, gathering updates, organising spreadsheets, preparing for meetings and tracking unfinished work. OpenAI’s recently introduced ChatGPT Work aims to simplify many of these routine activities. Designed to work across connected workplace applications and files, the tool can gather relevant information, prepare summaries, draft presentations, create spreadsheets, build interactive websites and generate meeting briefings based on the data users choose to make accessible, provided employees use the right ChatGPT prompts. According to OpenAI, ChatGPT Work and Codex have together surpassed 10 million active users, reflecting a growing shift towards using AI not only for answering questions but also for assisting with recurring workplace tasks and productivity workflows. Below are five ChatGPT prompt examples that demonstrate how professionals can use ChatGPT Work to automate common work processes:
1. Start the Day with a Consolidated Briefing
Prompt: “Review my emails, calendar, unread workplace messages and open tasks from the past 24 hours. Tell me what needs my attention, which decisions or responses are pending, and what may be at risk of being missed. Then create a realistic plan for today around my existing meetings, citing the source of every important item. Do not send or change anything without my approval.” These kind of ChatGPT prompt examples are designed to consolidate information from multiple workplace applications into a single morning briefing, reducing the need to manually check different platforms.
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2. Generate a Weekly Project Update
Prompt: “Review this week’s project emails, messages, meeting notes, shared documents and task tracker. Turn them into a concise weekly update covering what was completed, what is still in progress, important decisions, current blockers and priorities for next week. Cite the source of each update and flag anything unclear or contradictory.” By collecting information from various project sources, the tool can prepare an initial draft of a weekly status report that users can review and refine.
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3. Analyse and Clean Up Spreadsheets
Prompt: “Review this spreadsheet for duplicates, missing information, inconsistent formatting, broken formulas and unusual data points. Create a cleaned version without changing the original, explain what you corrected, identify the most important trends and prepare a short summary with suitable charts. Flag anything that requires manual verification.” The prompt combines spreadsheet validation, data cleaning and analysis while preserving the original file for reference.
4. Catch Up After Being Away
Prompt: “Review my relevant emails, messages, meetings and shared files from [date] to [date]. Give me a concise catch-up on what happened, which decisions were made, what changed, what now requires my response and what I should prioritise first. Group related updates together, cite the sources and do not take any action without my approval.” This prompt helps users quickly understand key developments that occurred during their absence without reviewing every email or message individually.
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5. Prepare for an Important Meeting
Prompt: “Review the meeting agenda, previous notes, related emails, shared documents and available performance data. Prepare a briefing that explains the background, recent developments, unresolved questions, likely discussion points and the decisions I may need to make. Include five useful questions I should ask and cite the source of every key fact.” The resulting briefing consolidates information from multiple sources to help users prepare more efficiently for meetings.
OpenAI recommends connecting only the workplace applications and files that users want ChatGPT Work to access. The company says users retain control over what information is available to the AI and which actions require explicit approval. The company also suggests beginning with a recurring administrative task that consumes significant time. By providing clear context using the provided ChatGPT prompt examples for employees, and by specifying the desired output and defining approval requirements, users can automate routine preparation while retaining oversight of important decisions.
