Adapto Training
Crimson ITAvalon Test Equipment · September 24, 2026

Avalon x Claude Training

Everything from the session, in one place.

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Summary

Christi led an advanced Claude and Copilot session for Avalon. The group named fragmented data, manual reconciliation, weak status visibility, and recurring follow-up work as the main operational problems, and the session centered on three things you can reuse: Claude skills, an Executive Pulse agent in Copilot, and a scheduled Monday report in Claude.

What was covered

  • Claude skills, Copilot agents, connectors, scheduled tasks, and the Claude app's agentic mode.
  • The four part prompt: role, task, context, output. Context is the part that matters most. Say who the audience is, what happened before, what must not change, and which document or knowledge area is the source.
  • Building a reusable email drafting skill from your own sent mail, then the same capability as a Copilot agent.
  • Building an Executive Pulse agent in Copilot with Outlook, Teams, and cloud files as knowledge.
  • Scheduling the same pulse as a Monday 7:00 AM task in Claude, and which model to pick for it.
  • How connectors work, what Claude can and cannot see, and Avalon's rules for enabling them.

Where this is going

Christi ranked the agent opportunities the group raised. An executive pulse and company status agent came first, a cross system business intelligence agent second, then financial reconciliation and AR collections, then purchase order lifecycle tracking. The full list, and what each would need, is in the Agent opportunities section below.

This session covered level two skills. The reconciliation build the group asked about is level three work and gets its own technical conversation, plus a second 90 minute session for this group. Several intended attendees were not on the invite, so the second session also brings them up to speed.

Downloads

  • Session deck: Avalon Claude Training
    The slides from the session, including the prompt pattern, the security rules, and the homework.
    Download
  • Meet the Models
    Who the major AI models are, what each is good at, and how to use the thinking dial.
    Download
  • Which AI, When
    Claude, ChatGPT, and Copilot, and which one to reach for.
    Download
  • Same Idea, Different Name
    Projects, skills, plugins, connectors, artifacts, and what each tool calls them.
    Download

Prompts

Copy, paste into the tool named on the card, and adjust the details to your work.

Executive Pulse agent (Copilot)

Built live in the session. Paste the description into the Description field and everything from 'You are the Executive Pulse' into Instructions. Knowledge: cloud files, Outlook, Teams.

Copilot
Description: Provide executives and department leaders with a concise operational pulse of the organization by gathering information from approved data sources and surfacing important activity, emerging risks, stalled work, customer-impacting issues, and key accomplishments.

You are the Executive Pulse & Company Status Agent.

Your role is to provide leadership with a clear picture of organizational health and operational status.

When generating a report:

Gather information from available Microsoft 365 sources including:
- Outlook
- Teams
- SharePoint
- OneDrive
- Microsoft Lists
- Tasks
- Approved business applications

Review recent activity and identify:

1. Executive Summary
Provide a concise overview of what leadership should know today.

2. Major Wins
Highlight completed projects, key customer successes, revenue-impacting wins, and significant accomplishments.

3. Operational Risks
Identify issues requiring attention, including:
- Missed deadlines
- Escalations
- Customer concerns
- Vendor issues
- Approval bottlenecks

4. Department Pulse
Summarize status for:
- Sales
- Operations
- Finance
- IT
- Customer Support
- Other departments as information is available

5. Customer Activity
Identify:
- Significant customer interactions
- Emerging concerns
- Opportunities
- High-priority follow-ups

6. Financial Signals
Surface notable indicators such as:
- Collections concerns
- Vendor payment issues
- Outstanding approvals
- Significant transactions requiring awareness

7. Stalled Work
Identify projects, tasks, approvals, or requests awaiting action.

8. Decisions Needed
List decisions that require leadership attention.

9. Next Actions
Recommend leadership actions based on available evidence.

Rules:
- State facts only from available data.
- Do not infer performance ratings of employees.
- Clearly distinguish confirmed information from indicators or trends.
- Prioritize items with potential customer, revenue, operational, or compliance impact.
- Keep summaries concise and executive-friendly.
- Use a red/yellow/green style where appropriate.
- Focus on actionability, not activity.

Weekly Executive Pulse (Claude scheduled task)

The Monday 7:00 AM task built in the session. Paste into the Instructions of a scheduled task. Use Sonnet unless you have many connectors.

Claude
Act as my Executive Chief of Staff.

Review all information available through my connected systems and create a Weekly Executive Pulse Report.

Your purpose is not to create a chronology of events.

Your purpose is to answer a single question:

"Where are we as a company right now?"

Analyze available information and provide:

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Provide a five-to-ten sentence summary of current company status.

COMPANY HEALTH SCORE

Rate:
- Operational Health
- Customer Health
- Financial Health
- Team Health

Use:
Green
Yellow
Red

Provide reasoning for each rating.

MAJOR WINS

Identify:
- Customer successes
- Large opportunities
- Projects completed
- Positive operational outcomes

OPERATIONAL RISKS

Identify:
- Escalations
- Blockers
- Delayed approvals
- Vendor issues
- Customer concerns
- Resource constraints

WHAT CHANGED THIS WEEK

Identify significant developments compared to previous reporting periods.

DEPARTMENTS REQUIRING ATTENTION

List any departments showing elevated risk, bottlenecks, or unusual activity.

CUSTOMER IMPACTS

Surface anything likely to affect:
- Customer satisfaction
- Revenue
- Delivery
- Retention

FINANCIAL WATCH ITEMS

Identify:
- Collection concerns
- Outstanding balances
- Payment issues
- Revenue-impacting events

THINGS LEADERSHIP SHOULD ASK ABOUT

Provide the five questions leadership should investigate this week.

TOP PRIORITIES

Recommend the five highest-value actions leadership should take this week.

IMPORTANT RULES

Do not summarize everything.

Prioritize:
- Risk
- Revenue
- Customer impact
- Operational efficiency
- Compliance concerns

Ignore routine work.

If information is incomplete, explicitly say so.

Do not evaluate individual employee performance.

Focus on organizational visibility and executive awareness.

Build an email voice skill from your own sent mail

Run once in Claude with the Microsoft 365 connector connected. It reads your sent folder, learns how you write, and produces a skill you save. Then ask Claude to reply to any email 'in my voice'.

Claude
I want you to pull my last 25 emails from my sent folder, and I want you to evaluate my voice and tone from those emails. Ignore any emails that are apparently AI-written. Only concentrate on emails that are written by me, and create a prompt to build a skill based on my email tonality and how I like to write. This prompt and skill are going to be an email response skill.

Reply to an email in my voice, into Drafts

Once the email voice skill is saved. Claude drafts the reply in Outlook Drafts; you read it and hit send. Replace the bracketed parts.

Claude
There is an email from [name] from [when] about [subject]. Reply to [name] for me, in my voice. Let them know that [what you want to say]. Put the reply in my Outlook drafts so I can review it before it goes out.

Tune the agent after its first run

Open the agent, click the three dots, Edit, and message the agent. It rewrites its own instructions. Two examples from the session.

Copilot
I don't want a bulleted list for the executive summary. Write it as a short paragraph.

Ignore Power Automate notifications and other automated system emails when building the report.

The four part prompt, and the four context questions

The pattern under every prompt in the session. Use it when a prompt is not landing.

Any
Role: who the assistant is for this task.
Task: what you want done.
Context: everything it needs to know to do it well.
Output: what the result should look like.

Context is the part that matters most. Before you write it, answer four questions:
1. Who is the audience?
2. What happened before?
3. What must not change?
4. Which document or knowledge area is the source? (a file, a SharePoint site, a list, a mailbox)

How-tos

Step by step, for the things shown in the session.

Connect Claude to your Microsoft 365 accountClaude

Chandler installed the Microsoft 365 connector for the whole organization and granted the one time consent Microsoft requires. Each person still connects their own account once.

  1. In Claude, click your name, then Settings, then Connectors.
  2. Under Customized connectors, find Microsoft 365 and click Connect. Sign in with your Avalon account.
  3. If you skip this, the first prompt that needs your mail or files will ask you to connect. Same steps.
  4. To ask for another connector, click Discover, find it, and message Chandler. You can browse the list, but only Chandler can enable one.

What this means for privacy: Claude sees only what you can see. It cannot read someone else's mailbox or OneDrive unless that person has already shared it with you.

Build an email voice skill in Claude and use itClaude

A skill is a saved recipe. The rule of thumb: if you keep asking Claude or Copilot for the same thing, make it a skill. Replying to email in your own voice is the most common one.

Build it

  1. In Claude, make sure you are in Chat (top left; Chat and Cowork are now the same place).
  2. Pick the model: Sonnet, effort Medium. Permissions can stay Manual, or set Auto if you want it to work without pausing.
  3. Paste the prompt "Build an email voice skill from your own sent mail" from the Prompts section, or dictate it. Voice gets more context in than typing; Christi uses Wispr Flow at the desk.
  4. Claude reads your sent folder through the Microsoft 365 connector, works out your voice and tone, and produces a skill file.
  5. Click Save as skill at the top of the result. If you do not see the button, tell Claude "save this as a skill". Do not download the file and do not email skill files to each other.
  6. To see it later: your name, Settings, Customize, Skills. The skill keeps learning from examples. One attendee's picked up his double spaces after periods.

Use it

  1. In a new chat, ask Claude to reply to a specific email in your voice (see the "Reply to an email in my voice" prompt). It drafts the reply.
  2. The Microsoft 365 connector cannot send mail, which is the point. The reply lands in your Outlook Drafts. Open Outlook, read it, and send it yourself.
  3. On the road, Claude's voice mode can walk you through your inbox and draft replies the same way. Always to Drafts, never auto send.

The same skill can be built as a Copilot agent. Same instructions, Agent Builder instead of Skill Creator.

Build the Executive Pulse agent in CopilotCopilot

This is Copilot, not Copilot Studio, so there are no extra credits to buy.

  1. Open Copilot. The desktop app is easiest; the web version at office.com and the one inside Teams work too. If the desktop app does not show a full license, you are signed in with the wrong account or do not have Copilot assigned yet.
  2. Go to Agents, then New agent.
  3. Click Skip on the conversational builder. You are building it by hand.
  4. Click the pencil next to "New Agent" and name it Executive Pulse. There is a length limit on the name.
  5. Description: paste the one line description from the Prompts section. It cannot be blank, or the Create button stays grey. If you are stuck, type any word and press Tab.
  6. Instructions: paste everything from "You are the Executive Pulse & Company Status Agent" down.
  7. Knowledge: turn on Cloud files, Outlook, and Teams. You can add a shared mailbox by its address, and Web search if you want it. Copilot connectors are admin only.
  8. Suggested prompts: in the builder chat, type "create two suggested prompts for me based on the instructions". It needs at least one.
  9. Click Create, then Start chat, pick a suggested prompt, and send it.

Tune it after the first run. Next to the agent, click the three dots, Edit, and message the agent with the change. "No bulleted list for the executive summary." "Ignore Power Automate notifications." It rewrites its own instructions.

Sharing. Share the agent with specific people or the whole company. Permissions still apply: it never shows a colleague a file they could not open themselves.

Schedule the Monday Executive Pulse in ClaudeClaude

The same pulse, delivered every Monday morning without anyone asking for it.

  1. In Claude, go to Scheduled.
  2. Click New task and choose Set it up manually.
  3. Name it Monday Executive Pulse.
  4. Schedule: Weekly, Monday, 7:00 AM.
  5. Permissions: Auto, so it runs without waiting for you.
  6. Require this computer: off. Everything it reads is in the cloud through your connectors.
  7. Instructions: paste the "Weekly Executive Pulse" prompt from the Prompts section.
  8. Model: Sonnet. It handles everyday reporting and saves tokens. Opus thinks longer and costs more, and only earns it on heavy setups with many connectors.
  9. Advanced settings: turn on Notify when the task finishes if you want a push or email. Your choice.
  10. Leave Work in project or folder off. Click Save.
  11. Test it now: the three dots next to the task, Run now, then View at the bottom to watch it work. It picks the connectors it needs on its own.

What the group said

Christi asked four questions to shape the examples. The answers, lightly cleaned up.

If you could add one person tomorrow who did only one thing all day, what would it be?

  • Equipment data entry and pricing updates.
  • Management reports, produced with less manual effort.
  • An executive assistant for email and chat: triage, gather the information, highlight what matters across the organization.
  • Business Central permissions. They are multi tiered and convoluted, and someone needs to own what users can do, what they should be able to do, and how that changes.
  • Financial and utilization analysis: data analytics, financial data, asset utilization.
  • Sales support: quotes, order processing, finding customers, following up on outstanding requests and orders.
  • Market analysis. One already exists: an agent that gathers competitor, manufacturer, large industry, and article material into a high level market overview.

What is important but nobody has time to do consistently?

  • Reading customer purchase orders closely enough to be sure every requirement is replicated.
  • Financial reconciliation across AP, AR, journal entries, payments, and invoices.
  • Payment matching. One customer payment can cover five invoices, and historical records are not always tied correctly.
  • Financial reporting: cash flow, DSO, AR aging, all of it dependent on clean records and a lot of data entry.
  • Blanket purchase order tracking. Large blanket POs come in and spend against them is not tracked well.
  • Calibration procedures. Thousands of them, and technicians need to be on the current version.

What can't you answer today because the information is scattered?

  • AR and AP status: what is outstanding, what is negative and why, which vendors have put Avalon on hold.
  • The full financial picture. Reconciling AR or AP can mean the bank, email, and two ERP systems.
  • The sales pipeline: leads, opportunities, stage, what is being quoted.
  • The purchasing workflow: approvals, vendor submission, payment, return, vendor updates, and where each request sits.
  • Most of it lives in Microsoft tools: Teams channels and chats, SharePoint, Lists, Excel, Outlook. Banking is the main outlier. Manual reconciliation was estimated at about 80 percent of one person's week.

The Monday report everyone wants

"Where are we?" across departments: customer response times and inquiry counts versus replies, quote requests, service turnaround and outsourced assets, sales activity and pipeline stage, vendor status and credit holds, inbound and outbound orders, equipment going on and off rent, shipments, asset utilization, and financial exposure. Customer experience first. Often it needs a single customer view across departments.

Agent opportunities, ranked

In the order Christi ranked them by impact.

  1. Executive pulse and company status agent. A Monday executive summary with key metrics across departments, customer activity, and operational status. Built in the session as a Copilot agent and as a scheduled Claude task.
  2. Cross system business intelligence agent. The answer to information spread across two ERPs, Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, Excel, CRM, banking, and vendor email.
  3. Financial reconciliation agent matching invoices, payments, journal entries, AR, and AP, and an AR and collections agent for outreach, follow up, and overdue balance tracking. Today an invoice level review of one customer takes five or six hours for 50 or 60 invoices, because the Excel reports do not show enough line detail to catch missed card fees, omitted shipping, or credit memos on rental returns. This one needs its own technical conversation before it is built.
  4. Purchase order lifecycle agent tracking requests through approval and vendor workflows. Power Automate may fit here, and it is the advanced end of Power Automate.
  5. Quote and opportunity tracking agent for visibility into sales opportunities, quote progression, and outcomes, alongside a customer order and vendor requirement validation agent to reduce missed requirements when POs are read by hand.
  6. Calibration procedure monitoring. Procedures live in IndiSoft, which has its own SQL database, and a script already dumps them into SharePoint. Sources are manufacturer sites and Guidep. Manufacturer versions can be scraped; Guidep, a government site, is an open question. Likely a Copilot job: check and validate the newest version continuously.
  7. Vendor status and follow up agent to cut the time spent chasing updates from external vendors.

Also in play: the market analysis agent Chandler and Michael already built. An RSS based version in standard Copilot is being researched.

Working rules for Claude at Avalon

  • Claude sees only what you can see. It cannot reach another person's OneDrive, mailbox, or files unless that person has shared them with you. Permissions are unchanged by AI.
  • Avalon's account is the business account. Avalon data goes into it, never into a personal login.
  • Connectors. The Microsoft 365 connector is installed organization wide; each person still clicks Connect once when prompted. Other connectors need Chandler's approval and enablement. You can browse the connector list and ask for one; you cannot turn it on yourself. The one time organization wide Microsoft consent has already been granted.
  • Skills. Save skills with the Save button in Claude. Do not email skill files to each other. If a skill is worth sharing, share it properly.
  • Drafts, not sends. Have AI put replies in Outlook Drafts and send them yourself.
  • Model choice for scheduled tasks. Use Sonnet for the Monday pulse and other everyday scheduled work. Opus thinks longer and costs more tokens, and it only earns that on heavy environments with many connectors.
  • Voice. Dictating a prompt gets more context in than typing. Christi uses Wispr Flow at the desk and voice mode while driving.

Questions asked in the room

  • Do I connect Claude to Microsoft myself, or does an admin? Both. Chandler opened it for the organization; each person clicks Connect once in Settings, Connectors.
  • The prompt is asking me to connect Microsoft 365. Same thing. Connect it and run the prompt again.
  • Are the data handling concerns resolved? Never fully, with any tool. Avalon's business account is the protection: your data is not used for training and the account is built for compliance. Claude sees only what you can see.
  • Do I have to copy from Claude into Outlook? No. The skill is not inside Outlook, but Claude replies through the connector and the draft appears in your Outlook Drafts.
  • Save the skill or download it? Save. Do not email skill files around.
  • Is this Copilot Studio? No. Regular Copilot agents. Studio needs credits most clients do not want to buy.
  • Can a normal Copilot agent read RSS feeds? Chandler already has one pulling RSS and scoped web search. Christi is sending notes on doing it in standard Copilot.
  • I don't see Cloud files, Outlook, and Teams under Knowledge. Wrong Copilot sign-in, or no full license yet. Check the desktop app, which shows your license.
  • Create is greyed out. The description is blank. Type anything and press Tab.
  • My summary came back as bullet points. Three dots, Edit, tell the agent no bullets for the summary.
  • Sonnet or Opus? Sonnet for Microsoft only setups and scheduled work. Opus when you have many connectors and need deeper reasoning.
  • Should I turn on notifications for the scheduled task? Up to you. Push, and a checkbox for email.

Follow-ups and what's next

Part two: Level 3 AI Agent Development. A 90 minute session for this group, with setup guidance for the needs raised today and an operational dashboard example. Julia proposed Tuesday, September 29 at 10:00 AM PT or Friday, October 2 at 11:30 AM PT; Christi's booking link works too. Christi suggested making these two hours going forward.

Also being scheduled: a technical conversation on the reconciliation build with Vance, both Michaels, Katie, Christi, and Chandler.

From Christi

  • Everything on this page: the group's needs, prompts used today, how-to guides for everything demonstrated, and an operational dashboard guide. Prompts and how-tos are up now.
  • The session deck, in the Downloads section. The prompt pattern is on the Mindset Shift slide.
  • Notes for Chandler on RSS feeds in a standard Copilot agent.
  • Answers to any open questions on the board.

From Avalon

  • Vance: assign Copilot licenses to the two attendees who could not create an agent today.
  • Michael and Chandler: invite the people who were missed today; the recording covers the gap and part two closes it.
  • Everyone: connect Microsoft 365 in Claude, save your email voice skill, and finish the Executive Pulse agent if you did not in the room.

Questions and answers

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