OpenAI Academy small business resource hub

# Work

Workshop materials, practice files, prompts, and next steps

Calvin Landrum

Welcome!

Use this page as the follow-along hub for the OpenAI Academy small-business workshop. You will find the workshop deck, fictional practice files, copy-ready prompts, and current learning resources.

Get ready

• Sign in to the Plus or Business account you plan to use.

• Confirm that Chat and Work are visible.

• Open the workshop deck and download the practice pack.

• Keep your own business materials nearby if you want to work on a real task. Remove sensitive personal, customer, employee, financial, or legal information first.

Workshop materials

• Participant materials folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KRxZKCONEyOCkPna5wCOhP7jGEhNNzvo

• Download the Harbor Bloom practice pack: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mDLmZmemIR9rGSLF3tcpqcpifcmdYpCf/view

• Open the workshop deck: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Ofz09bxqmwAoafIiJ780F68XtDS_YL8V8e9cYwOulb0/edit

Harbor Bloom is a fictional florist. Use its files when you do not have suitable business materials of your own.

What you will practice

• Personalization and memory: carry useful preferences forward while still providing task-specific business facts.

• Plugins: connect permitted context and actions from tools your business already uses.

• Projects: keep related chats, files, and instructions together.

• Images: explore directions, create a first visual, and revise it for brand fit.

• Data Analysis: inspect a file, check data quality, find patterns, and create a useful visual.

• ChatGPT Work: complete longer, multi-step work across multiple sources and review the finished artifacts.

• Skills and Scheduled Tasks: reuse or automate a workflow after it has been tested and reviewed.

A useful prompt has three parts

Task: What do you want ChatGPT to do?

Context: What should it know about your business, audience, source material, or situation?

Expectations: What should a good result include, avoid, or look like?

Ask ChatGPT to identify missing information, state important assumptions, and help you improve the result.

Copy-ready prompt starters

Improve a prompt

Help me improve this prompt. First, ask up to three questions that would make the result more useful. Then rewrite the prompt using Task, Context, and Expectations. Keep it practical for a small-business owner. [PASTE YOUR PROMPT]

Set up a Project

I want to use this Project for [BUSINESS JOB OR WORKSTREAM]. Help me write concise Project instructions. Ask what you need to know about the business, audience, tone, source materials, recurring outputs, and what should always receive human review.

Good Project scopes include one durable job or workstream, such as local marketing, customer communications, hiring and onboarding, or weekly operations. Use separate Projects when the work has different audiences, sources, or review needs.

Explore image directions before generating

I need a visual for [PURPOSE] aimed at [AUDIENCE]. Before creating an image, propose four distinct creative directions. For each, describe the composition, mood, color palette, typography approach, and what would make it feel specific rather than generic. Do not generate the image until I choose a direction.

Analyze a file

Review this file before drawing conclusions. Tell me what it contains, any missing values or quality issues, what business context is missing, the three most useful observations supported by the data, and one chart that would help an owner understand the situation. Separate observations from assumptions and suggest one practical next step.

Run a weekly owner review with Work

Create a one-page weekly owner review using the supplied business profile, operating data, customer feedback, recent messages, and calendar. Include a concise management brief, a prioritized action tracker, one decision-useful chart, draft follow-ups that require approval before sending, a staff checklist, and assumptions, data-quality issues, and human-review notes. Before starting, propose your approach and identify missing or conflicting information. Do not send messages, change records, or schedule anything without explicit approval.

Review before you use the result

• Is the important information supported by the provided sources?

• Are current or consequential claims verified?

• Are assumptions clearly labeled?

• Does the output fit the intended audience, channel, and brand?

• Is sensitive information protected?

• Is a person still responsible for customer, employee, financial, and legal decisions?

• Have you tested a normal case and a missing-information case?

Save a prompt, Project, Skill, or Work result only after it produces a useful first version. Schedule or automate it only after the workflow is stable, reviewed, and low-risk.