For executive assistants
Fluidwave for executive assistants: one task manager for multiple inboxes, calendars and contacts
You run several inboxes, a calendar that changes hourly and a list of promises made on someone else’s behalf. Fluidwave keeps Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Contacts and tasks in one window, with AI triage and automations that handle the routine mail before you see it.
Jobs to be done
Work several inboxes as one
- Today
- Two or three inboxes, each in its own tab, each with its own sense of urgent. Switching between them is where things slip.
- With Fluidwave
- Connect every Gmail account you manage, each with its own color, and work from an “All accounts” view or one account at a time. AI triage runs across them with a summary, a priority score and a suggested action per thread, and you confirm with one key.
Track every request made on the executive’s behalf
- Today
- A request goes out on the executive’s behalf and now you are the only person tracking whether it came back. Dozens of these at any moment.
- With Fluidwave
- Turn a request into a task in one action with the email linked. Set it to Waiting with the kind of reply expected, or assign it to the person who owns it. The Waiting view becomes the chase list, and each task shows the thread it came from.
Know who every sender is and what we owe them
- Today
- Who is this sender, what did we promise them, and when did we last speak? The answer is spread across the address book, the inbox and a spreadsheet.
- With Fluidwave
- Google Contacts sync two-way, so every person is a contact with organization, title, phone numbers and notes. Link contacts to tasks and @-mention them in comments. Automations can match on “from contact” and star or bucket mail from the people who matter.
Automate the recurring admin so it stops needing me
- Today
- Expense reports, board packet prep, travel confirmations and vendor invoices repeat every month, and each one is a chance to be forgotten.
- With Fluidwave
- Recurring tasks with per-instance skip cover board prep, expense deadlines and travel checklists. Email automations convert invoices and confirmations into tasks, archive noise and draft AI replies to routine requests, so the inbox you open is already smaller.
A day with Fluidwave
- 1
Morning: triage every inbox before the first meeting
Open Triage on the All accounts view. Each thread arrives with a summary, a priority score and a suggested action, and the overnight automations have already archived the newsletters and starred anything from board members. Press Reply for what needs an answer, Task for what needs to be tracked, Archive for the rest. Requests that need the executive’s decision become tasks assigned to them; requests you handle yourself stay with you. The progress counter shows how far you are, and the tasks you create carry the original thread so nothing needs re-reading.
- 2
Block prep time around the executive’s calendar
Switch to the calendar with the executive’s Google Calendar visible alongside yours. Fluidwave reads events only to find free time; the only events it writes are sessions you choose to sync. Drag prep tasks from the Unscheduled panel into the gaps before each meeting, or let AI scheduling place them with breaks around the events. A long piece of prep can be split into sessions across two days. Confirm what you want and sync those sessions so the shared calendar reflects the plan.
- 3
Midday: chase what is waiting
Every request that leaves your desk goes to Waiting with the kind of reply expected: a call, an email or a message. Those tasks leave the Active view, so the working list stays short, and collect in the Waiting view. Twice a day, open that view, scan by due date, and reply on the linked thread for anything overdue. When a reply arrives, an automation matching the sender puts it at the front of triage, and the linked task is one click away. Link every counterpart as a contact so their open tasks and history show on the contact page when the executive asks “where are we with them?”
- 4
Assign, comment and delegate
Tasks the executive owns are assigned to them and discussed in threaded comments with @-mentions, which keeps decisions on the task rather than in another email. Group the list by assignee to see their queue next to yours. For overflow work that nobody on the team should own, such as research or data entry, set a task to Delegate and send it to a human assistant through the marketplace with a budget and deadline.
- 5
End of day: recurring admin and the weekly review
Before closing, check the Waiting and Delegating views once more and confirm tomorrow’s sessions that AI proposed. Recurring tasks for expense deadlines, the weekly one-on-one agenda and monthly board prep surface on their own, and a single instance can be skipped when the executive is traveling without breaking the series. On Friday, run a weekly review: close what came back, reschedule what did not, and use Gantt view to see whether next week’s dependencies, such as “book flights” before “confirm hotel”, still line up.
Features that matter for this
Built-in email client
Read, reply, archive, label and search your inbox without leaving the app.
AI email triage
Every incoming thread gets a summary, a priority score and a suggested action you confirm with one key.
Email to task
Turn an email into a task with one action and keep the thread linked to it.
Waiting-on tracking
A dedicated status for tasks waiting on a reply, call or message so they stop cluttering your active list.
Google Contacts sync
Two-way sync with your address book so contacts can be linked to tasks and mentioned in notes.
Google Calendar sync
Read events to find free time and write back only the sessions you choose to sync.
Visual automation builder
Node-based rules with triggers, conditions and actions across both email and tasks, with live match preview.
AI auto-reply
An automation step that drafts or sends an email reply from plain-English instructions.
Recurring tasks
Daily, weekly, monthly and custom repeat rules with per-instance skip and reschedule.
Auto-prioritization
The app orders your list for you using tunable criteria such as due dates, quick wins, importance and dependencies.
Why executive assistants struggle with generic to-do apps
Most task apps assume one person, one inbox and one calendar. An executive assistant works across several of each, on behalf of someone else, and the work arrives almost entirely as email. A to-do app that lives in a separate window from Gmail forces you to read each message twice: once to understand it and once to retype it as a task.
The second gap is follow-up. A large part of the job is requests that are out with other people, and a flat list shows those as if you could work on them. What you need is a waiting-for list that builds itself and gets out of the way.
The third gap is people. The address book, the inbox and the task list know different things about the same person, and reconciling them is manual.
Fluidwave closes all three. Multiple Gmail accounts sit in one client with an All accounts view and AI triage across them. A thread becomes a task in one key with the email linked. Waiting is a status with a typed reason, hidden from the Active list until it is unblocked. Google Contacts sync two-way, and contacts link to tasks, appear in comments and drive automations. The calendar reads events to find free time and only writes the sessions you choose.
Automations executive assistants set up first
Assistants tend to build the most automations of any Fluidwave user, because the inbox has the most predictable patterns. Common first rules:
- When an email arrives from one of the contacts you pick as board members or investors, star it and set the triage bucket to Reply.
- When an email arrives with “invoice” or “receipt” in the subject or with an attachment from a known vendor, convert to a task on the Expenses list with a due date and the Finance category.
- When an email arrives that is a newsletter and can be unsubscribed, archive it, then clear the backlog from the Newsletters view with bulk one-click unsubscribe.
- When an email arrives with a meeting request, draft an AI reply with instructions like “Thank them, say I will send available times within one business day, and copy nothing else.” Drafts wait for you; the Send automatically option exists but warns that replies go out unread.
- When a task changes to Waiting, add the Follow-up category and set a due date.
Each rule shows a live preview of the emails or tasks it would match and can be applied to the existing backlog. Fluidwave flags contradictory actions and overlaps between rules. For rules you would rather teach than write, move an email into a bucket and add a plain-English note; Fluidwave drafts the automation from it.
Working across accounts: what to know before you connect
Fluidwave works with Gmail and Google Workspace accounts only. If the executive is on Outlook or Microsoft 365, the email and calendar half of the app will not connect, and a different tool is the honest recommendation. Everything here assumes Google.
Shared inbox access follows Google’s own model: you connect the accounts you have credentials for, and each account keeps its own color and labels. Labels sync two-way with Gmail, so anything you file in Fluidwave shows up the same way in the executive’s Gmail. Nobody at Fluidwave reads your email; full message bodies and attachments are never stored and are fetched from Gmail only when you open them. Google tokens are encrypted before they reach the database, and Fluidwave complies with the Google API Services User Data Policy Limited Use requirements.
Fluidwave is free forever with no credit card, which removes the usual procurement conversation. It runs on the web, as a macOS desktop app, and on iPhone and Android; Windows and Linux desktop apps are coming. If the wider office needs a full project management suite, Asana or ClickUp may sit alongside it, with Fluidwave as the assistant’s own command center.
Frequently asked questions
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