What the assistant can do

A plain list of what Workspace AI and the Mail, Calendar and Drive AI panels can read and change, and what they never do.

This page lists what each assistant can do. The assistants can only reach mailboxes, calendars and drives that have AI turned on. Actions marked (approval) wait for you to press Approve first. See Approve or decline actions.

Workspace AI

The Workspace Assistant can do everything below, across all the mailboxes, calendars and drives in your workspace that have AI turned on.

Mail

• See your mailboxes and a combined inbox across them
• List the emails in a folder, and search one mailbox or all of them
• Read an email or a whole conversation, including its headers and original source
• List an email’s attachments and read the text inside them (for example a PDF, a calendar invitation, a contact card or a forwarded email)
• Summarize a conversation
• Look up contacts
• Check an email for phishing (when phishing detection is on)
• Mark as read or unread, star, archive and restore
• Delete emails (approval)
• List labels, set or clear a label on one or many emails, and create a label
• Delete a label (approval)
• Create and update drafts
• Delete a draft (approval)
• Send an email (approval)
• Snooze, unsnooze and cancel a snooze, and list snoozed emails
• Schedule an email to send later (approval), list scheduled emails, call one back (approval) or retry one (approval)
• Mute or unmute a conversation, and list muted conversations
• Add to, remove from and list Read later
• Find newsletters you receive, and unsubscribe from them (approval)

Calendar

• List your calendars and events
• Read an event, including who has accepted or declined
• Add, change and delete events (approval)
• Reply to an invitation with yes, no or maybe (approval)

When the assistant changes an event or replies to an invitation, the other attendees are notified.

Drive

• List your drives, browse folders and see storage use
• Search all your drives by file name or content
• Read file details and the text of plain text files
• Create a folder, rename, and move within the same drive (approval)
• Delete a file or folder (approval). In Google Drive and OneDrive, the item goes to that service’s trash. On other drives, it is deleted for good.
• Pin and unpin folders (approval). Pins are personal, so only you see them.

People

• List the members of the workspace and their roles
• Find mail you exchanged with a member, a member’s events, and files on drives a member connected

Workflows

• List workflows and their runs, and open a run to see what happened
• Create, change and turn on or off a workflow (approval)
• Delete a workflow (approval). Only workspace owners and admins can delete workflows.
• Run a workflow now (approval)
• Cancel a run or retry its failed steps (approval)
• Try an Ask step on recent mail, to see how it would sort it (when your server offers Ask and Branch steps)

See Workflows for what workflows are.

Workspace administration

Only for workspace owners and admins:

• List pending invitations, and revoke one (approval)
• Remove a member (approval)
• Change the workspace accent color (approval)

Mail AI, Calendar AI and Drive AI

The side panels can do less than the Workspace Assistant. Each one works only with the mailbox, calendar or drive you have open.

Mail AI cannot send email or save drafts. When you ask it to draft a reply, it writes the text in the chat.

What the assistants never do

On purpose, no assistant can:

• Upload files or create share links
• Turn AI on or off
• Change calendar visibility, which drive folders a workspace sees, or what is shared
• Add or remove mailboxes, calendars and drives from a workspace, or join a workspace
• Change MCP client settings
• Change member roles, send workspace invitations or change the workspace logo
• Do anything that needs your two-factor code
• Decide what happened to a send whose outcome is unclear. You resolve that yourself in the mailbox. See Mail.