Prepare research or technical reports
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 | 12 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Tools and auth, Builders |
| O*NET activity | Documenting/Recording Information (4.A.3.b.6) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 12 occupations that perform it.
- Participate in the preparation of reports or scientific publications.
- Write reports or proposals related to photonics research or development projects.
- Collect and report data on topics, such as patient encounters or inter-institutional problems, making recommendations for change when appropriate.
- Research, compile, and prepare reports, manuals, correspondence, or other information required by management or governmental agencies.
- Prepare reports, including assignment of company funds or recording of department revenues.
- Prepare and balance period-end reports, and reconcile issued payrolls to bank statements.
- Prepare reports summarizing daily transactions and earnings for individual customer accounts.
- Prepare reports to provide answers in response to specific problems.
- Prepare library statistics reports.
- Prepare invoices, reports, memos, letters, financial statements, and other documents, using word processing, spreadsheet, database, or presentation software.
- Work with technical material, preparing statistical reports, planning and typing statistical tables, and combining and rearranging material from different sources.
- Participate in the publication of data or information.
- Document photonics system or component design processes, including objectives, issues, or outcomes.
- Conduct research, compile data, and prepare papers for consideration and presentation by executives, committees, and boards of directors.
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
12 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Bioinformatics Technicians
- Brokerage Clerks
- Executive Secretaries and Executive Administrative Assistants
- First-Line Supervisors of Office and Administrative Support Workers
- Gambling Cage Workers
- Interviewers, Except Eligibility and Loan
- Library Assistants, Clerical
- Patient Representatives
- Payroll and Timekeeping Clerks
- Photonics Engineers
- Statistical Assistants
- Word Processors and Typists
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Present research or technical information”. 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.