Centram Centre for Applied Artificial Intelligence

AI , ANALYTICS AND AUTOMATION COURSE FOR ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANTS

Course overview

This course is designed for administrative assistants who want to learn AI, analytics and automation to make everyday office work faster, more accurate and less repetitive.

Course title

AI, Analytics & Automation for Administrative Assistants

Course description

 Hands-on course teaching how to apply AI, basic analytics and automation tools to common administrative tasks: email and schedule management, document processing, reporting, meeting capture, form processing and workflows. Emphasis on no-code/low-code tools, safe usage of generative AI, RPA patterns, and human-in-the-loop design for accuracy and privacy.

Target audience

 Administrative Assistants, Executive assistants, Office managers,  and Team coordinators.
Course Duration & Delivery Modes

This course has 2 delivery modes: 2 weeks of intensive physical boot camp and 3 weeks of online training OR 4 weeks of intensive physical boot camp training, whichever is convenient to the participants.

Learning objectives
By course end participants will be able to:

  1. Identify automation opportunities and design safe, user-centered workflows.
  2. Use no-code/low-code tools (Power Automate, Zapier) to automate repetitive tasks.
  3. Apply generative AI responsibly for drafting emails, documents and summaries.
  4. Build basic RPA bots for routine system tasks and automate Excel/Sheets reporting.
  5. Extract structured data from documents (invoices, forms) using OCR and AI.
  6. Create simple dashboards and basic analytics to support decisions.
  7. Evaluate privacy, security and compliance risks and design human-in-the-loop checks.

Course Content
 Orientation & common admin automation use cases

  1.  Typical problems: email triage, meeting scheduling, expense/invoice processing, report generation, onboarding checklists, approvals.
  2.  Course roadmap; project choices; demo of an end-to-end automation (inbox → extract invoice → update spreadsheet → notify).

Foundations: AI, analytics & automation concepts

  1. Key concepts: what AI can and cannot do, generative vs retrieval systems, bots vs integration, analytics types (descriptive/predictive).
  2. Automation lifecycle and human oversight.

Secure use of generative AI for drafting & summarization

  1. Practical prompts and templates for emails, memos, minutes and standard replies.
  2. Summarization of long emails and documents; rewriting and style/brand consistency.
  3. Labs: use ChatGPT or Workspace Labs (or internal LLM) to draft emails and summarize meeting notes; practice prompt design and verification steps.

Email, calendar & communication

  1. Rules, filters, automated replies; calendar booking assistants; meeting prep workflows.
  2. Tools: Outlook rules + Power Automate, Gmail filters + Google Apps Script, Calendly, Microsoft Scheduler.
  3.  Lab: build a workflow to auto-categorize/label emails and create calendar events from form submissions.

Document processing & OCR

  1. OCR basics, extracting structured data from invoices, receipts and forms; template vs AI extraction.
  2. Tools: Microsoft Form Recognizer, Google Document AI, ABBYY, open-source Tesseract for advanced users.
  3. Lab: process a batch of scanned invoices → extract vendor/date/amount → populate a spreadsheet.

RPA & system integration

  1. When to use RPA vs API integrations; common patterns (data entry, screen scraping, batch updates).
  2. Tools: Power Automate Desktop, UiPath (Community), Zapier, Make.com.
  3.  Lab: build an RPA flow to take data from a spreadsheet and update an internal web portal.

Analytics and dashboards for admins

  1.  Basic analytics (KPIs for tickets, response time, expenses), pivot tables, visualizations and automated reporting.
  2. Tools: Excel/Sheets advanced features, Google Data Studio, Power BI basics.
  3. Lab: create an automated weekly dashboard pulling data from a shared sheet.

Workflows, approvals & forms automation

  • Designing approval flows (leave requests, expense approvals), notifications and audit trails.
  • Tools: Microsoft Power Automate / SharePoint / Forms, Google Workspace + Apps Script, Airtable automations.
  • Lab: create an approval workflow that routes requests, captures signatures and logs actions.

Governance, privacy, accessibility & change management

  1. Handling sensitive data, retention, consent, secure connectors, role-based access, documenting automations.
  2. Ensuring accessibility of automated outputs; testing and rollback plans.
  3. Lab: run a risk checklist and adjust one created workflow to meet privacy requirements.

Capstone project

Implement an end-to-end automation solving a real admin task. Examples:

  1. Automated invoice intake: email receipt → OCR → ledger update → manager notification.
  2.  Meeting automation: agenda creation (AI) + calendar invites + automated minutes summarization and action-item assignment.
  3.  Onboarding workflow: forms → accounts provisioning checklist → equipment request & tracking dashboard.
  4. Deliverables: process map, working automation/RPA flow, short demo, security/privacy checklist and user guide.

Tools and platforms (no-code first)

  1.  No-code/low-code: Microsoft Power Automate & Power Platform, Zapier, Make.com, Airtable automations, Google Apps Script (low-code).
  2.  RPA: Power Automate Desktop, UiPath Community.
  3.  Generative AI: ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Bard, or internal enterprise LLMs; meeting notes: Otter.ai, Fireflies.
  4.  Document extraction/OCR: Microsoft Form Recognizer, Google Document AI, ABBYY, Tesseract (advanced).
  5. Data & reporting: Excel, Google Sheets, Google Data Studio, Power BI.
  6. Connectors/Integration: APIs, connectors for Outlook/Gmail/SharePoint/Slack/Teams/Calendly.

Practical labs & example exercises

  1. Create an email triage filter + auto-reply with templated responses.
  2. Build a Zap/Flow that creates tasks in a project board from form submissions.
  3. OCR a batch of receipts and auto-populate an expense spreadsheet with validation rules.
  4. Build a simple dashboard showing ticket volume and average response times, auto-refreshing weekly.
  5. Create a secure approval workflow with audit logging and back-out procedure.