Section 1: Email, correspondence and internal communication

Scenario 2: Extracting decisions and outstanding tasks from a long email thread

Level: Beginner · Tools: Gmail AI Overview conversation summaries or Ask Gemini; Outlook Summary by Copilot.

Who and in what situation

Murat works on a holding company's procurement team. He extracts the latest decisions and his remaining tasks from threads involving weeks of correspondence between suppliers, legal and finance teams.

How it is done today

He opens the latest message, scans upward through the replies and copies dates into a notes file. He reads the thread from the beginning to determine whether an earlier proposal has been withdrawn.

How to do it with AI

  1. In Gmail, he opens the thread and clicks the Summarize this email button at the top; AI Overview synthesizes the key points and replies. [18]
  2. For a more detailed result, he uses Ask Gemini > prompt box > Submit to say, “Separate the decisions, rejected options, open questions and tasks assigned to me.” [16]
  3. In Outlook, he selects the conversation and clicks Summary by Copilot or Summarize. If there is a numbered citation, he opens the relevant message. [19]
  4. He organizes the output into decision, owner, deadline and source message fields; he does not add any date that is not explicitly stated.
  5. Before sharing, he also checks the latest message and attachments.

Example prompt

Summarize this email thread based solely on its content. Use the headings Decisions, Decision Date, Owner, Outstanding Task, Explicitly Stated Deadline, Unresolved Question and Relevant Message. Do not guess missing information.

Evidence and real-world example

No independent company case study was found. Official Gmail and Outlook documentation describes extracting key points from a long conversation and returning to the source message. [18] [19]

Points to consider

Gmail summaries may be inaccurate, and smart features must be enabled. [18] Even if an Outlook citation is available, verify the latest version of the decision in the email. This scenario covers only the email thread; it is not a meeting summary.

Sources for this scenario

  1. Gemini ile Gmail işbirliği (support.google.com)
  2. Gmail AI Overview ileti dizisi özetleri (support.google.com)
  3. Outlook e-posta zincirini Copilot ile özetleme (support.microsoft.com)