Perform administrative or clerical tasks
Most of the output can be produced by software today.
This is the most automatable shape of work there is, and also the shape that most needs a live connection to the system the record lives in. Without that connection an agent can prepare the entry but cannot file it.
| How automatable | Mostly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Recording, documentation and administration |
| Jobs that do it | 14 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Tools and auth, Builders |
| O*NET activity | Performing Administrative Activities (4.A.4.c.1) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 14 occupations that perform it.
- Perform administrative and management functions related to the practice of law.
- File pleadings with court clerks.
- Prepare digital files for printing.
- Answer telephones and schedule appointments.
- Perform various administrative tasks, such as typing documents or answering telephone calls.
- Perform clerical and administrative duties such as keeping records, paying bills, and hiring and supervising personnel.
- Perform office duties on a temporary basis when needed.
- Perform clerical duties, such as filing, typing, operating switchboards, or routing mail and messages.
- Perform general administrative tasks, such as taking attendance, editing internal paperwork, and making phone calls.
- Answer telephones, and route calls or deliver messages.
- Participate in the work of subordinates to facilitate productivity or to overcome difficult aspects of work.
- Perform contract administration duties, assisting with bid openings or the awarding of contracts.
- Sign for cash-on-delivery and registered mail before leaving the post office.
- Provide clerical support to other departments.
- Obtain doctors' signatures on death certificate and complete other paperwork, such as insurance claims forms.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for recording, documentation and administration, and what it costs.
The work is not writing the record, it is filing it where the record lives. Make reaches most of those systems from $9 a month, which is the cheapest honest start; Composio is for when you are writing the agent yourself.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
14 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Animal Caretakers
- Barbers
- Childcare Workers
- Concierges
- Court, Municipal, and License Clerks
- Executive Secretaries and Executive Administrative Assistants
- First-Line Supervisors of Office and Administrative Support Workers
- Funeral Attendants
- Graphic Designers
- Lawyers
- Paralegals and Legal Assistants
- Postal Service Mail Carriers
- Residential Advisors
- Tour Guides and Escorts
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Perform administrative or clerical activities”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.