In short
- You do not need twenty AI tools. Pick one per job: writing and summarising, analysis, meetings and automation. Start with the tool that is already in the suite your team works in.
- Every tool has a limit. A meeting tool may not support your language, an analysis tool can make up a figure and an automation can stall without anyone noticing.
- Do it yourself while it is one job, with no customer data and a person checking the result. Bring in help once it involves links to your systems, personal data or work that runs without a person.
Which AI tool do you use for what? Pick one per job and start with the suite your team already works in. If your team works in Microsoft 365, Copilot in Excel and Teams are the first candidates. If it works in Google Workspace, look at Gemini in Docs and Meet. On top of that you need a general assistant such as ChatGPT or Claude for work that falls outside those apps.
The most important condition: first agree which company data may go in, and use a business plan, not personal accounts. Which assistant suits your team best is covered in ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot for your team: how to choose. This article is about the next question: which tool for which job.
These choices come from the providers' documentation, read on 23 October 2026. We have not tested the tools side by side ourselves. Features and plans change often, so check them before you buy.
Which AI tool do you use for which job?
| Job | Start with | When not to |
|---|---|---|
| Writing and summarising | Your general assistant, or Gemini in Docs | Customer data in a tool your organisation has not approved |
| Analysis and documents | Copilot in Excel, or Claude with an uploaded file | A decision resting on a result nobody has checked |
| Meetings and minutes | The feature in your meeting tool | Meetings in a language or setup the tool does not support |
| Automation | A connector tool such as Zapier or n8n | Payments or personal data without an owner watching |
Which AI tool do you use to write and summarise?
For writing and summarising, start with your general assistant: ChatGPT, Claude, or the assistant in the suite you already work in. Gemini in Google Docs can write and rewrite text, shorten and expand it, summarise it and use information from your Drive files as a source. The suggestions appear in your document and you accept or reject them (Google Docs Help). For that you need an eligible Google Workspace or Google AI plan.
This is the job to start with, because the risk is limited as long as a person reads the result. Quality depends on your prompt: give the role, the context, the task and the format you want.
When not to: do not put customer data into a tool your organisation has not approved, and do not publish figures or sources from AI text without checking them. How to agree that is in Using AI safely: how to write an AI policy for your team.
Which AI tool do you use for analysis and documents?
If your figures sit in Excel in Microsoft 365, start with Copilot in Excel. It can build formulas and calculations across several sheets, summarise data, create charts and pivot tables and answer questions about your data. Copilot must be part of your Microsoft 365 plan and switched on by your organisation. On Android only chat mode works (Microsoft Support).
If you have loose documents, Claude with an uploaded file is an option. You can upload up to 20 files of 500 MB each per chat. For PDFs up to 100 pages, Claude also reads images, charts and diagrams. For longer PDFs, up to 1,000 pages, it reads the text only. Other documents are read as text only. To upload an Excel file, you need to switch on code execution and file creation in your account (Claude Help Center, 23 July 2026).
When not to: do not let a decision rest on a result nobody has calculated. A model writes a logical story for any table, even when the data do not support it. Ask for the calculation steps and check a few figures yourself.
Which AI tool do you use for meetings and minutes?
Use the feature in the meeting tool you already have. That saves you a connection, and you know where the recording ends up.
Teams with Copilot. Copilot summarises the main points, including who said what, suggests action points and answers questions about the meeting. To do that afterwards, live transcription must be on. For the summary afterwards (Intelligent recap) you need Teams Premium or a Microsoft Copilot licence. If the organiser turns Copilot off, recording and transcription also go off (Microsoft Support). Copilot does not work in meetings hosted outside your own organisation, or in end-to-end encrypted meetings (Microsoft Learn, updated August 2026).
Google Meet. The "Take notes for me" feature creates notes in a Google Docs document in the organiser's Drive, with a short and a full version. It needs a suitable Google Workspace or Google AI plan. The supported languages are English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish, and Dutch is not on that list. Only one language works per meeting (Google Meet Help).
When not to: do not choose automatic minutes for a meeting about staff or a sensitive customer file without agreements on consent and retention. In Meet, admins can require participants to give explicit consent, but that setting is off by default. If you have no meeting tool with its own feature, you can have your general assistant work up a transcript.
Which AI tool do you use to automate?
Automating is different from using an assistant: a tool carries out steps by itself as soon as something happens. For simple connections you use a connector tool.
In Zapier you build a Zap: a trigger (the event that starts it) and one or more actions. A Zap with several steps, filters or search steps needs a paid plan (Zapier Help). n8n is a workflow tool with AI features that, according to its documentation, you can also host yourself, with Docker or at a cloud provider (n8n Docs).
When not to: do not let a connection move payments or personal data without an owner who is watching. An automation that runs without a person can stall or pass on wrong data without anyone noticing. An AI agent that picks its own steps needs a separate assessment.
What can you do yourself, and when do you need help?
You can do it yourself if four things are true:
- It is one job, not a chain of systems.
- No customer data goes in, or only in a tool your organisation has approved.
- A person reads or checks the result before it lands anywhere.
- No payment or customer communication is automatically attached.
You bring in help when the work goes beyond that: connections with your CRM, accounting or ERP, personal data covered by the GDPR and the AI Act, several teams that must use the same instructions and data, or automations that run without a person. The rules for using AI in a small or mid-sized business are in EU AI Act for SMEs: what you must and must not do.
That is also why, with clients, we work on one place for AI, data and workflows instead of separate tools side by side. What that looks like is on the page about the AI workplace.
Want to know which tools suit you? Book a conversation.
When does this approach not work?
A choice per job does not work if your team works in three ecosystems at once, for example Microsoft for email, Google for documents and its own CRM. Then you first decide where the shared source of truth lives. It also does not work for heavily regulated work such as recruitment or credit, where the AI Act sets extra requirements for high-risk systems.
And the list ages. Providers change features and plans, which is why each source has its date. Repeat the choice when your team takes on a new job or a tool changes its terms.
Sources
- Microsoft Support, Get started with Copilot in Excel, accessed 23 October 2026
- Claude Help Center, Upload files to Claude, 23 July 2026
- Microsoft Support, Catch up on meetings with Microsoft Copilot in Teams, accessed 23 October 2026
- Microsoft Learn, Manage Microsoft Copilot in Teams meetings and events, updated 28 August 2026
- Google Meet Help, "Take notes for me" in Google Meet, accessed 23 October 2026
