As we’ve written before, sending your executive a daily or weekly update email can improve communication, add clarity, and assert your value as an Executive Assistant. Because of this, we’ve built a Digest Builder in the Base app that makes creating these updates simple and efficient.
An effective digest might include an overview of your executive’s upcoming schedule, status updates on projects, reminders and questions that need to be addressed, and general updates on the team and their work.
To do this on your own, you would likely need to copy and paste information from the calendar (event titles, times and locations, as well as any included notes), struggle with formatting in Outlook or Gmail, and search through your Sent folder to review previous digests. With Base, we’ve simplified this process so you can spend your time focusing on more strategic tasks.
Let’s take a look at how you might use Base to create a weekly email digest for your executive.
Building a Digest
Once you’ve set up your Base account and connected your executive’s calendar(s), building a digest is simple and quick.
With Base, you can easily add headers, text boxes, calendar events, images, or attachments. If you’d like to start with pending questions or status updates, use a text box to add that info, then format it as needed. You can insert a line divider to make sure each section is clearly defined.
Adding Calendar Events
Use the calendar filter to define the date range you’d like to include in your digest. To add all events from one day, simply click the + button next to the date—all calendar events are automatically added.
From here, you can choose how to format each event: add a priority flag, remove the date or location, paste information from the notes section of the calendar invite, or add context with a text box.
To add a single event, just click the + button next to it.
Continue adding days or events, or switch to another type of entry, such as a screen grab or project update.
Preview and Send
Once you’ve finalized your digest, you can preview it (for desktop and mobile devices), add any additional recipients, change the subject line, and send. We’ve added the option to schedule your digest to be sent at a later date or time, which means you can create it on a Friday and be sure it will arrive in your executive’s inbox first thing Monday morning.
The Digest Builder is just one of many features we are creating in Base. Stay tuned for more info on how to use our Analyze feature to assess how your executive is spending his or her time, and help them meet their goals!
