How to Use ChatGPT Plugins (Full Tutorial)

0:00In this video, I'll show you exactly how to use ChatGPT Plugins step by step. Plugins connect ChatGPT to the apps you already use, like Gmail, Outlook and Slack, so it can pull data and then actually do work for you. I'm David and we'll start with the basics, like installing a plugin, plugin permissions, and just getting it to work, and then we'll move on to the more powerful stuff, like how to stack plugins together. By the end, you'll know how to use ChatGPT to get work done

0:29in other apps. So, let's go. We're here in ChatGPT on a simple prompt and response. This is what a plugin looks like. It's part of this prompt that went to my Gmail and pulled back all the emails from the last 24 hours that still need my attention. You can click on it to see it ran a search in Gmail and

0:50then ChatGPT ran the filter. Finally, it shows us the email to follow up on. To install a plugin yourself, open the left sidebar and click on Plugins. You'll see over 100 apps here split across 10 categories. There are over 1,000 plugins available, so the best way to find what you want is to search. The featured plugins up top are the most common. Here you'll see communication and storage apps like Gmail, Slack, Calendar, Drive, and Outlook. Now, a few plugins work on the free plan of ChatGPT, but for most plugins, you'll need the paid plan. Outlook and

1:28Gmail require you to pay. With any plugin, you can click the plus icon to connect right away. To learn what it does first, click the app instead. Then scroll down to where it says App and Skills. You can click on the app to see all the actions the plugin could take. There are read actions which search for and find data, and there

1:49are write actions which actually do things. You see examples on screen like adding email attachments, creating reply drafts, or even sending email. You can also click under Skills to understand any additional context that ChatGPT uses with the plugin. This is interesting trivia for Outlook, but not needed to understand it. Now to install it, click the Install plugin button at the top right. You sign

2:14in with your account and you're connected. There are two ways to use a plugin. The first is the way that I showed you at the start of the video. Here, ChatGPT uses the prompt to infer you want to use a plugin. You can also tell ChatGPT to use the plugin explicitly. Do that by typing the at symbol and then the name of the plugin. It shows up below the prompt box and

2:38you can press Enter to select it. That's how you can do another simple email search. ChatGPT finds the right email, downloads the attachment, and puts it on screen. When you click the file, you'll open the PDF directly, but it's also nice to click the Outlook icon to go back to the original email. Now that's a good start for plugins, but they can also do things and not

2:59just read emails. Before we do that, let's talk a little bit about plugin permissions. Permissions control what a plugin is allowed to do. To set those permissions, click on your profile in the bottom left and then click Settings. Click on Plugins and then let's click on Outlook to configure it. Click on Permissions and you get four choices.

3:20With Always ask, ChatGPT asks for your approval for anything it does with the plugin. This gets annoying pretty fast. With Allow read actions, ChatGPT can read and search your data, but it can't act or do those write actions without approval. Allow low-risk actions is the default, so ChatGPT judges from context what counts as

3:42low-risk. For example, drafting an email might be considered low-risk. Then Allow all actions means no checks at all. I don't recommend this. AI goes off the rails sometimes and you want to prevent that. Allow read actions is a good starting point. Remember, you can always loosen this later once you've watched it work a few times.

4:01Let's see how this plays out on a real email. We'll send an email to Adele asking when the next David's Donut Den charity bake sale is. That triggers this permission box and this is your chance to check the message before it sends. Click See details to see that message. You can see who it's addressed to, the

4:20subject as well as the content of the email. This kind of looks like code, but just think of it like field names and field values. Now, if this is wrong, you want to click Deny and then correct ChatGPT. You can click Allow once to approve this. ChatGPT then takes a few seconds, then sends the email, which we also see in

4:39my sent folder. There are hundreds of other plugins out there and a good one for your finances comes from today's sponsor QuickBooks Online. This one has more than one skill and you can read what each of them does by clicking in. So, as an example, I can ask something like, can you compare my donut shop's

4:58financials with the benchmarks from other donut shops? And that brings back a chart comparing my shop against others in my area. You can also stack plugins together, so take a look at this prompt. Can you turn my last email from Adele into an estimate? That uses the Gmail plugin to pull the email, then the QuickBooks plugin to send

5:19the estimate. Check out the link in the description below for 50% off QuickBooks Online for a limited time. That's how to use ChatGPT Plugins to actually get work done every day. Now, if you want to go deeper, I put together a full playlist covering everything ChatGPT. And down below, you'll also find a link to get 50% off QuickBooks Online

5:38for a limited time. Thanks for watching. See you in the next one.