Small and mid-sized businesses lose hours every week to copy-and-paste work: re-keying form data, chasing approvals, sorting email, and building the same report again. This instructor-led course teaches workers to find those bottlenecks and improve them with AI and no-code automation tools. Trainees map a current process, measure where time goes, redesign it with a human checkpoint at each risky step, and build a small working automation in a training sandbox using Microsoft Power Automate with AI Builder, Copilot Studio, or Zapier with its AI steps. Typical builds include routing incoming requests, extracting fields from a fictional invoice or intake form, drafting a reply for human approval, and posting a weekly summary. Each session pairs a short concept block with guided build time and peer testing. The course emphasizes controls: what data a flow can touch, logging, error handling, approvals, and when not to automate. Trainees do not implement production systems; they leave with a tested prototype and a one-page process improvement proposal, including expected time savings and risks, that they can bring to their manager and IT for approval. Designed for operations, administrative, and team-lead staff at Massachusetts employers who own a repeatable process and want to improve it themselves.
What you will be able to do
By the end of the course, trainees will be able to:
- Map a current workplace process step by step and measure time, handoffs, and error points.
- Redesign the process using AI and automation, placing a human approval at every step that affects customers, money, or personal data.
- Build and test a working no-code automation in a sandbox that includes at least one AI step and one approval step.
- Apply data controls: limit connector permissions, log runs, and handle errors.
- Write a one-page improvement proposal with baseline, expected savings, risks, and an approval path.
Who this course is for
Operations coordinators; Office managers; Administrative supervisors; Customer service team leads; Accounts payable and receivable clerks; Dispatch and scheduling coordinators
Before you start
Owns or regularly performs a repeatable process at work. Comfortable with spreadsheets and email rules. FAST-02 or FAST-04 recommended. No coding.
Hands-on activities
- Process mapping with sticky notes (in person) or a whiteboard (virtual) on a fictional Merrimack Freight request process.
- Time study: trainees estimate and then measure a baseline.
- Guided build 1: email or form request to a tracking list with an AI-generated category.
- Guided build 2: AI extraction of fields from a fictional invoice into a table with human approval.
- Peer break-it test: partners try to make each other's flows fail and log the result.
- Proposal pitch to a mock manager-and-IT panel.
How your learning is measured
- Attendance at all five sessions.
- Process map and baseline time study (Meets / Not yet).
- Working sandbox automation demonstrated live, including an AI step, an approval step, and error handling.
- Peer break-it test log.
- Improvement proposal scored against rubric.
