How to Use monday.com AI Blocks for Status Reports
Short answer: monday.com AI blocks are components you drop into automations and dashboards to summarise items, draft text and write formulas. They are not a separate chat product. You find them in the automation builder under the AI category, and in dashboard widgets under “AI”.
The practical use is a weekly status report that writes itself from your board. Setting it up takes about 20 minutes and saves a manager 45 minutes a week, which is why it is the one AI block worth learning first.
Where are the AI blocks actually located?
Two places in monday.com, and neither is signposted well.
In the automation builder, add an action and look for the “AI” group at the bottom of the action list. You get blocks for “summarize item updates”, “draft an update”, and “generate a formula”. In a dashboard, click Add widget and pick the “AI” section — this is where the summariser lives.
If you cannot see them, check the plan. AI blocks are available from Standard ($12/seat/month) upward. Basic at $9 does not include them.
How do you build a self-writing status report?
Four steps. Do them in this order or the automation will not have data to work with.
- Clean the update feed first. Ask the team to post updates on items, not in Slack. AI summarisers read item updates; they cannot see your DMs.
- Create the automation. Trigger: “Every Sunday at 6pm”. Action: “Summarize item updates” scoped to the current board, last 7 days.
- Send the summary somewhere concrete. Add a “Create an update on item” or “Send a message to a channel” action. Into a board item called Weekly Status works better than a Slack post, because it keeps history in one place.
- Add the dashboard widget as a second view. A “Battery” widget plus an AI summary widget on one dashboard gives you numbers and narrative side by side.
Run it once manually before scheduling. The first output is usually too long, which tells you the update feed has too much chatter.
What does a good AI prompt inside monday.com look like?
AI blocks accept a short instruction alongside the data scope. Three that produce usable reports:
- “Summarise the last 7 days of updates per item. Note any item with no update in two weeks. Maximum 120 words.”
- “List decisions made this week with the person who made them. Do not include opinions.”
- “Draft a status update in the voice of the project lead: what shipped, what slipped, what needs a decision.”
The third one is the best value for time. Most status reports fail because nobody wants to write the “what needs a decision” line, and the block will at least draft it.
Does monday.com AI cost extra?
No, it is bundled from Standard upward — but the seat maths matter. Standard is $12 per seat per month (annual billing) with a 3-seat minimum. A 10-person workspace is $120 a month before you have automated anything.
Basic at $9 per seat does not include AI blocks. Pro at $19 and Enterprise add more automations (25,000 actions per month on Pro vs 250 on Basic) which is the real constraint on how often your summariser can run.
| Plan | Price/seat/month | AI blocks | Automations/month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $9 | No | 250 |
| Standard | $12 | Yes | 500 |
| Pro | $19 | Yes | 25,000 |
| Enterprise | Custom | Yes | 250,000 |
Where does it fall short?
Two honest limits. First, the summariser only reads what is written in monday.com. If your team discusses work in Slack or on calls and posts a one-line update afterwards, the summary reflects the one-liners. You get a tidy report that is wrong.
Second, the AI blocks are not configurable in depth. You cannot set temperature, feed examples, or chain multiple blocks in one automation. Formulas generated by the formula block often produce correct syntax but use column IDs you then have to rename.
The quality is fine for internal reporting and thin for anything a client will read. I would not send an unedited AI block summary to a paying customer.
Who should use this and who should not
Use it if you already run projects in monday.com, your team posts item updates at least twice a week, and someone spends more than half an hour a week assembling status reports by hand. The setup is cheap and the failure mode is visible.
Do not use it if you are on Basic (blocks are absent), if your team lives in Slack and treats monday.com as a filing cabinet, or if you need client-facing reports with a consistent house style. That last case needs a real template, not a summariser.
Quick Summary
- monday.com AI blocks sit inside the automation builder and dashboard widgets, not in a separate chat UI.
- Bundled from Standard ($12/seat/month) upward; Basic at $9 has none.
- The highest-value build is a Sunday automation that summarises 7 days of item updates into one status item.
- Summaries only reflect text written in monday.com — Slack and call context is invisible.
- Do not ship unedited AI block output to clients; use it as the draft.
