Every Monday morning, millions of people sit down and write some version of the same thing: "Here's what I did last week. Here's what I'm doing this week. Here are my blockers." It takes 20 minutes. Nobody reads the full thing. And by Wednesday, half the updates are outdated anyway.
Weekly team updates shouldn't be a chore. They exist for a good reason -- keeping everyone aligned without pulling people into yet another meeting. But the way most teams do them is broken. Too manual, too tedious, and too disconnected from where the actual work happens.
The good news: you can automate most of this without turning your team into robots. Here's how.
Why manual updates are failing your team
The problem isn't that updates are a bad idea. It's that writing them by hand creates friction in all the wrong places.
Think about what happens when someone writes a weekly update from scratch. They open their task board. They try to remember what they worked on Tuesday (good luck). They check Slack for context they've already forgotten. They write three paragraphs that took 20 minutes to compose and 30 seconds to skim.
Multiply that by every person on your team. That's hours of collective time spent on a reporting ritual that could be handled in minutes. And if those updates are happening in meetings instead of writing, the cost is even higher -- see our guide on how to reduce meetings at work.
The bigger issue is accuracy. People forget things. They undersell progress on a project that's going well. They skip mentioning a blocker because they think they'll resolve it tomorrow (they won't). Manual updates are filtered through memory and optimism, neither of which are great data sources.
Step 1: Pull updates from where work actually happens
The single most impactful thing you can do is stop asking people to summarize their work and start generating summaries from the work itself.
If your team tracks tasks in a project management tool, that tool already knows what got completed, what moved forward, and what's been sitting untouched for a week. Same with your version control system, your CRM, your design tools -- whatever your team uses day to day.
The play is simple: connect your update system to the tools where work happens, and let it pull the data automatically.
Some practical options:
- Zapier or Make automations: Set up triggers that collect completed tasks, merged PRs, closed deals, or shipped designs at the end of each week and compile them into a digest.
- Built-in reporting tools: Tools like Asana, Linear, and Jira have weekly digest features or can generate sprint summaries. If you're already paying for them, use these before adding another integration.
- AI-powered workspaces: Platforms like Trilo's automated weekly report generator can generate team updates from your task activity, conversations, and docs automatically since the AI has context on everything happening in your workspace.
The key is that the raw material for updates already exists. You just need to stop rewriting it by hand.
Step 2: Create a consistent template
Automation without structure is just noise. Before you flip any switches, decide what a good update looks like for your team.
A solid weekly update template covers three things:
- What shipped or progressed -- Concrete deliverables, not vague activity descriptions. "Launched new pricing page" beats "worked on website stuff."
- What's coming next -- The top priorities for the week ahead, ideally pulled from your task board.
- What's blocked -- Anything that needs help, a decision, or an escalation. This is the most important section and the one people are most likely to skip when writing manually.
Keep it short. If your update template requires more than five minutes to review, it's too long. People stop reading after the first scroll.
Step 3: Schedule delivery where your team already looks
An automated update that lands in a channel nobody checks is worse than no update at all. Figure out where your team actually pays attention, and put the updates there.
For most teams, that's one of these:
- A dedicated Slack or chat channel -- Something like #team-updates that people check at the start of their week.
- Email digest -- Old school, but effective for teams that live in their inbox. Tools like Geekbot, Status Hero, or Range can send scheduled email summaries.
- Dashboard -- If your team starts the day on a shared dashboard or workspace, pin the weekly update there.
The timing matters too. Monday morning delivery works for most teams -- it sets context before the week's first standup. Friday afternoon can work if your culture leans toward end-of-week reflection. Just pick one and be consistent.
Step 4: Add a human layer on top
Here's where a lot of automation guides stop, and it's where most automated updates start feeling hollow.
Pure auto-generated updates miss the stuff that doesn't live in your task board. The "heads up, this client is getting frustrated" context. The "I'm going to be slow this week because I'm onboarding a new hire" reality. The wins that don't have a Jira ticket.
The fix is a lightweight human layer. After the automated summary generates, give people 2-3 minutes to add a one-liner of context. Not a rewrite of the whole update -- just a sentence or two of commentary that a machine couldn't know.
You can do this with a simple prompt: "Anything to add that the data doesn't show?" Most people will skip it (and that's fine). But the ones who have something important to share will use it, and those additions are usually the most valuable part of the whole update.
Step 5: Close the feedback loop
The last piece most teams miss: making updates a two-way street.
If people write updates and nothing happens, they stop caring. If someone flags a blocker in their update and nobody responds, they'll stop flagging blockers. The update becomes a box-checking exercise instead of a communication tool.
Build in a lightweight response mechanism:
- Managers or leads should acknowledge blockers within 24 hours, even if it's just "seen, working on it."
- Celebrate wins that show up in updates. A quick reaction or reply goes a long way.
- If updates consistently surface the same problems, address the root cause instead of letting the same blocker appear week after week.
The goal is to make people feel like their updates are read and acted on. Once that happens, the quality of updates goes up dramatically -- even the automated parts, because people keep their task boards cleaner when they know the data gets surfaced.
Tools that help with automated updates
A quick rundown of options depending on your setup:
- Geekbot / Standup Alice: Async standup automation tools for Slack. Simple, focused, and good for small teams.
- Range: Combines automated activity feeds with manual check-ins. Nice hybrid approach.
- Linear / Asana / Monday reports: If you're already in one of these, their built-in reporting features are often enough.
- Trilo: Pulls from your tasks, conversations, and docs to generate updates with full workspace context. Works well if your team already uses it as their primary workspace.
- Custom Zapier/Make workflows: If your stack is unusual, building a custom automation that pulls from your specific tools gives you the most control.
Start small, expand later
You don't need to automate everything at once. Start with one team. Set up a basic automated digest -- even if it's just a list of completed tasks pulled from your project board. Run it for two weeks. See if the team finds it useful.
If they do, layer on the template structure and the human commentary. Then expand to other teams. By the time you're rolling it out company-wide, you'll have worked out the kinks and have proof that it actually saves time.
The teams that do this well save 2-4 hours per week on reporting and, more importantly, end up with updates that are more accurate and more useful than anything anyone was writing by hand.
Imagine opening your week with a digest that's already written, pulled straight from the work your team actually did. Trilo makes that real. Give it a try and reclaim those Monday mornings.
