Notion is increasingly integrating AI into its customers' workspaces. After the successful launch of Notion AI, a text-based AI assistant, the team has shipped three new features that should change the way we interact with databases. These new properties are AI-powered, and we're going to have a look at them in this blog post.
New AI properties
AI Summary
AI Summary is a groundbreaking database feature that automatically generates a summary of all database items based on their other properties, providing users with a seamless and effortless way to gain insights from their data. As an example, take a look at this database of the top three male players from Roland-Garros:
To add this property, simply click the "+" button to the right of your last property or navigate to Settings → Properties → Add a new property, just as you would for any other classic property.
What's interesting here is that instead of displaying all properties, you now only have to display one: the AI Summary.
By enabling "Auto-update on page edits", the AI can be triggered automatically each time a modification is made to the database item. This is awesome for lazy people like me 🙃
AI key info
The AI key info property is a powerful tool that consolidates all of your properties into a single, comprehensive output. You have the ability to choose which properties to include and customize the format to your liking. It's a game-changer for anyone looking to streamline their database management process.
Pro tip: Notion also offers the ability to enable "Update all pages", which allows for a one-time manual update to all pages in the database. This is an incredibly useful feature for updating all items at once with ease.
AI custom autofill
In my opinion, he AI custom autofill property is the coolest among the three. It empowers you to request any additional information based on existing properties or elements inside the page. For instance, in the previous example, you can request the height and weight of tennis players or any other publicly available information you desire. The possibilities are endless with this feature, and it makes Notion an even more powerful tool for automation.
The prompts are very easy to figure out: simply ask for the output and format you want.
Who can use Notion’s AI properties
If my understanding is correct, as of today (July 2023), all Notion users can benefit from AI properties, whether or not they have an AI plan.
However, if you don’t have an AI plan, you won’t have access to two features:
- Auto-update on page edits
- Update all pages (at once)
If you’re interested in using Notion AI, feel free to sign up here (affiliated).
Use Cases
I'm going to use examples of my templates to illustrate how you can use these new AI properties.
Meetings Next Steps
If you record all your meetings in Notion (text-based recaps), you can use AI custom autofill to create a bullet list of the next steps to take, points discussed during the meetings, or just a simple recap with a few key highlights. I use it in my own Freelancer Dashboard template in the meeting notes section.
Job Boards & Applications
If you use Notion to post jobs and receive applications, as you can with my Startup Job Board template, you can use the AI Summary property to access all applicants' information at once. This can be really helpful for quickly scanning the applications and making a first sort.
Real Estate Properties
A real estate property is composed of many different sets of information, such as home size, lot size, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, date of construction, etc. If you're looking at multiple homes, you can scrape all of that data (from Zillow or any other marketplaces) inside Notion pages and have a property that summarizes all the key information in one place.
This can be integrated into my Real Estate HUB template and save you a ton of time.
Content Management
If you have a database of blog posts or newsletters, such as the one integrated into my Blog Post Planner, you can extract the outline and/or headings of your content into an AI property. This is a great way to share your work with co-workers without them having to go through all the content.
Final Words
In conclusion, Notion's new AI properties are a game-changer for anyone looking to streamline their database management process. With AI Summary, AI Key Info, and AI Custom Autofill, users can gain insights from their data in a seamless and effortless way. The possibilities for automation are endless with these features. While some features are only available with an AI plan, all Notion users can benefit from AI properties. With these new tools, Notion continues to innovate and push the boundaries of what's possible in productivity software.
Start now & create your Notion account 🙃
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