Gemini made easy: 4 ways Workspace extension can supercharge your productivity

Inboxes overflowing? Documents piling up? Let Google Gemini's handy Workspace integration streamline your Workspace.

Gemini can be a powerful sidekick for Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and Drive. (Express image)

If you’re a Google Workspace power user, you’re going to love the newly rebranded Google Gemini’s tight integration with all your favourite apps like Gmail, Docs, Sheets and Drive. The Workspace extension lets the AI chatbot supercharge your productivity by streamlining common tasks across Google’s suite of tools. Let’s dive in.

Getting started

Using the Workspace extension is quite simple if you already have a Google account (who doesn’t?). Just navigate to Gemini’s Settings, hit the Extensions tab, and toggle on Google Workspace if it isn’t already connected. Gemini now has access to scan your emails, documents, and drive files to lend a hand.

Don’t sweat the privacy concerns either. Google has explicitly stated they won’t use any of your personal Workspace data for advertising purposes or let human reviewers peek at it.

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Gmail

If you’re fed up with your overflowing inbox, Gemini can be your email assistant. Instead of squinting through every last message, fire off a quick “summarise the last email from [sender]” to get the TLDR. If a reply is needed, follow up with “draft a response to [sender]” and Gemini will whip up a respectable draft for you to modify or send as-is.

You can also put Gemini’s search skills to work by asking it to “find emails about [topic]” or “surface emails from [name].” Add in filters like skipping certain labels to really home in on what you need. Once you spot the pertinent message in the list, just click on it to open within Gmail.

Drive and Docs

Writing that big proposal or strategy deck? Gemini can quickly analyse entire files from Drive or any other Workspace app. You can ask it to “summarise [file name] from @drive” for a high-level overview to jog your memory without rereading everything. Or you can put Gemini’s research chops to work by commanding it to “find files related to [subject] from @docs” when you need to locate supporting materials.

Sheets

Gemini can also crunch data in Google Sheets. You can highlight interesting trends by asking it to “analyse [file] and show lead source by deal size in @sheets” Or go broader with “find patterns in [spreadsheet] in @sheets” to surface insights you may have missed.

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Keep in mind that you don’t have to spell out full file names if you don’t want. Gemini is smart enough to figure out what you’re asking about from surrounding context. Just type in natural commands when making requests. But if Gemini doesn’t get it, you can specify the app in question by entering “@” followed by the app name.

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Google